Julius Caesar was a renowned general, politician and scholar in ancient Rome who conquered the vast region of Gaul and helped initiate the end of the Roman Republic when he became dictator of the Roman Empire. Despite his brilliant military prowess, his political skills and his popularity with Rome’s lower- and middle-class, his rule was cut short when opponents—threatened by his rising power—brutally assassinated him.

Gaius Julius Caesar was born on or around July 13, 100 B.C., to his father, also named Gaius Julius Caesar, and his mother Aurelia Cotta. He was also the nephew of the famous Roman general Gaius Marius.
Caesar traced his bloodline to the origins of Rome and claimed to be a descendant of the goddess Venus through the Trojan prince Aeneas and his son Iulus. Despite his allegedly noble heritage, however, Caesar’s family was not wealthy or particularly influential in Roman politics.
Did you know? Unlike in the Shakespeare play, Caesar's last words were not "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?"). Instead they were reported as "You, too, my child?"
After his father died suddenly in 85 B.C., Caesar became head of his family at age 16—right in the middle of a civil war between his uncle Marius and the Roman ruler Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In 84 B.C., he married Cornelia, the daughter of an ally of Marius. Caesar and Cornelia had one child, a daughter named Julia.
In 82 B.C., Sulla won the civil war and ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia. Caesar refused and went into hiding. His family intervened and convinced Sulla to spare Caesar’s life; however, Sulla stripped Caesar of his inheritance.
Despite the reprieve, Caesar left Rome, joined the army and earned the prestigious Civic Crown for his courage at the Siege of Mytilene in 80 B.C. After Sulla’s death in 78 B.C., Caesar returned to Rome and became a successful prosecutor widely known for his oratory skills.

In 75 B.C., as he crossed the Aegean Sea in route to Rhodes to study philosophy and oratory, murderous pirates captured Caesar. Reportedly, Caesar acted more like a domineering leader with the pirates than their captive.
After his ransom was paid, the pirates let him go. But Caesar hired a private fleet to hunt them down and had the pirates crucified for their crimes.

Caesar soon began his political career in earnest. He became military tribune and then quaestor of a Roman province in 69 B.C., the same year his wife Cornelia died. In 67 B.C., he married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla and relative of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great), with whom he formed an important alliance.
In 65 B.C., Caesar became aedile—an important Roman magistrate—and produced lavish games in the Circus Maximus which endeared him to the public but threw him heavily into debt. Two years later, he was elected Pontifex Maximus.
Caesar divorced Pompeia in 62 B.C. after a politician incited a major scandal by disguising himself as a woman and making his way into a sacred women’s festival hosted by Pompeia.

One year later, Caesar became governor of Spain. A series of successful military and political maneuvers, along with the support of Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus (known as the richest man in Rome), helped Caesar get elected as senior Roman consul in 59 B.C.
Caesar, Crassus and Pompey soon formed an informal alliance (strengthened by the marriage of Caesar’s daughter Julia to Pompey) known as the First Triumvirate. The union terrified the Roman Senate who knew that a partnership between three such powerful men would prove unstoppable. They were right, and the triumvirate soon controlled Rome.

Caesar was appointed governor of the vast region of Gaul (north-central Europe) in 58 B.C., where he commanded a large army. During the subsequent Gallic Wars, Caesar conducted a series of brilliant campaigns to conquer and stabilize the region, earning a reputation as a formidable and ruthless military leader. 
Caesar built a bridge across the Rhine River into Germanic territories and crossed the English Channel into Britain. But his great successes in the region caused Pompey to resent him and complicated the already-strained relationship between Pompey and Crassus.
As Caesar conquered Gaul, the political situation in Rome became increasingly volatile, with Pompey its lone consul. After the deaths of Pompey’s wife (and Caesar’s daughter) Julia in 54 B.C. and Crassus in 53 B.C., Pompey aligned with Caesar’s opponents and ordered him to give up his army and return to Rome. 
Caesar refused and, in a bold and decisive maneuver, directed his army to cross the Rubicon River into Italy, triggering a civil war between his supporters and those of Pompey. Caesar and his armies pursued Pompey to Spain, Greece and, finally, Egypt.

Hoping to prevent Caesar from invading Egypt, the child pharaoh Ptolemy VIII had Pompey killed on September 28, 48 B.C. When Caesar entered Egypt, Ptolemy gifted him Pompey’s severed head.
Caesar soon found himself in the middle of a civil war between Ptolemy and his Egyptian co-regent Cleopatra. Caesar became her lover and partnered with her to overthrow Ptolemy and make her ruler of Egypt. The pair never married but their long-term affair produced a son, Ptolemy XV Caesar, known as Caesarion.

Caesar spent the next few years wiping out his enemies and what remained of Pompey’s supporters in the Middle East, Africa and Spain. 
In 46 B.C. he was made dictator of Rome for ten years, outraging his political opponents and setting the stage for the eventual end of the Roman Republic.

Caesar declared himself dictator for life in 44 B.C. However, his crusade for absolute power didn’t go over well with many Roman politicians. Fearing he would become king, a group of senators conspired to end his life.
On the Ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.), the senators, led by Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, stabbed Caesar 23 times, ending both his reign and his life as he fell bleeding onto the Senate floor at the feet of a statue of Pompey.
Caesar’s assassination at age 55 made him a martyr and incited a cycle of civil wars resulting in the downfall of the Roman Republic and the rise to power of his grandnephew and heir Gaius Octavius (Octavian)—later known as Augustus Caesar—to emperor of the Roman Empire.

Xerxes I, often called Xerxes the Great, ruled the Achaemenid Empire as its fourth King of Kings from 486 BCE until his assassination in 465 BCE. He's often portrayed as a ruthless leader, remembered for his invasion of Greece and a reign marked by rebellions, which ultimately contributed to the decline of the Achaemenid Empire. Xerxes was known for harsh punishments, promiscuity, and draining the Persian Empire's treasury.


Born around 518 BCE, Xerxes was the son of Darius the Great. His mother, Atossa, was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. This lineage played a crucial role in Xerxes's ascension to the throne. Xerxes received an education typical of Persian princes, learning to ride horses and hunt from the age of seven. By fourteen, he was taught wisdom, justice, prudence, bravery, and Zoroastrian values like truthfulness and self-control. At sixteen, Xerxes began a ten-year national service, practicing archery, javelin, competing, and hunting.


After Darius's death in 486 BCE, Xerxes became king, though his half-brother Artobazan also claimed the throne. Xerxes argued that his lineage through Atossa, Cyrus the Great's daughter, gave him a stronger claim. A Spartan king in exile supported Xerxes, which helped him secure the throne.


The Achaemenid Empire, also known as the Persian Empire, was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE. It covered a vast territory of 5.5 million square kilometers. The Persian Empire began when nomadic Persians settled in modern-day Iran around 1000 BCE. By 550 BCE, Cyrus II, or Cyrus the Great, took control of the Median Empire, a major power in the Near East. He then conquered the Lydian Kingdom in 546 BCE and Babylon in 539 BCE.


Darius I strengthened the Persian Empire through various means. He divided the empire into provinces. Satraps, or governors, were appointed to oversee these regions. Darius I also introduced a single currency and standard weights to facilitate trade. The Royal Road was constructed to improve communication and trade throughout the empire. Darius I claimed divine authority in the inscription at Mount Behistun.


Xerxes is most famous for his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE. However, his forces were ultimately defeated. Xerxes's actions sometimes upset the Babylonians. Rebellions and increased corruption contributed to the downfall of the Persian Empire.


The Persian Empire eventually fell to Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. After Alexander's death, the empire was divided and mainly ruled by the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Seleucid Empire. Despite its eventual decline, the Persian Empire left a lasting impact on history and culture.

1. One of the larger Sumerian cities may have had 80,000 residents.
The origins of Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia are still debated today, but archaeological evidence indicates that they established roughly a dozen city-states by the fourth millennium B.C. These usually consisted of a walled metropolis dominated by a ziggurat—the tiered, pyramid-like temples associated with the Sumerian religion.
Homes were constructed from bundled marsh reeds or mud bricks, and complex irrigation canals were dug to harness the silt-laden waters of the Tigris and Euphrates for farming. Major Sumerian city-states included Eridu, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, and Kish, but one of the oldest and most sprawling was Uruk, a thriving trading hub that boasted six miles of defensive walls and a population of between 40,000 and 80,000.
At its peak around 2800 B.C., it was most likely the largest city in the world.


2. The list of Sumerian rulers includes one woman.
One of the greatest sources of information on ancient Mesopotamia is the so-called “King List,” a clay tablet that documents the names of most of the ancient rulers of Sumer as well as the lengths of their reigns. The list is a strange blend of historical fact and myth—one early king is said to have lived for 43,200 years—but it also includes Sumer’s lone female monarch in the form of Kubaba, a “woman tavern-keeper” who supposedly took the throne in the city-state of Kish sometime around 2500 B.C.
Very little is known about Kubaba’s reign or how she came to power, but the list credits her with making “firm the foundations of Kish” and forging a dynasty that lasted 100 years.


3. The Sumerian city-states were often at war with one another.
Even though they shared a common language and cultural traditions, the Sumerian city-states engaged in near-constant wars that resulted in several different dynasties and kingships. The first of these conflicts known to history concerns King Eannatum of Lagash, who defeated the rival city-state of Umma in a border dispute sometime around 2450 B.C.
To commemorate his victory, Eannatum constructed the so-called “Stele of the Vultures,” a grisly limestone monument that depicts birds feasting on the flesh of his fallen enemies. Under Eannatum, Lagash went on to conquer the whole of Sumer, but it was just one of several city-states that held sway over Mesopotamia during its history.
The infighting led to several military advancements—the Sumerians may have invented the phalanx formation and siege warfare—but it also left them vulnerable to invasions by outside forces. During the latter stages of their history, they were attacked or conquered by the Elamites, Akkadians and Gutians.


4. The Sumerians were famously fond of beer.
Along with inventing writing, the plow, law codes, and literature, the Sumerians are also remembered as some of history’s original brewers. Archaeologists have found evidence of Mesopotamian beer-making dating back to the fourth millennium B.C.
The brewing techniques they used are still a mystery, but their preferred ale seems to have been a barley-based concoction so thick that it had to be sipped through a special kind of filtration straw. The Sumerians prized their beer for its nutrient-rich ingredients and hailed it as the key to a “joyful heart and a contented liver.”
There was even a Sumerian goddess of brewing called “Ninkasi,” who is celebrated in a famous hymn as the “one who waters the malt set on the ground.”


5. Cuneiform writing was used for over 3,000 years.
The Sumerian invention of cuneiform—a Latin term literally meaning “wedge-shaped”— dates to sometime around 3400 B.C. In its most sophisticated form, it consisted of several hundred characters that ancient scribes used to write words or syllables on wet clay tablets with a reed stylus. The tablets were then baked or left in the sun to harden.
The Sumerians seem to have first developed cuneiform for the mundane purposes of keeping accounts and records of business transactions, but over time it blossomed into a full-fledged writing system used for everything from poetry and history to law codes and literature. Since the script could be adapted to multiple languages, it was later used over the course of several millennia by more than a dozen different cultures.
In fact, archaeologists have found evidence that Near East astronomical texts were still being written in cuneiform as recently as the first century A.D.


6. The Sumerians were well-traveled trade merchants.
Since their homeland was largely devoid of timber, stone, and minerals, the Sumerians were forced to create one of history's earliest trade networks over both land and sea. Their most important commercial partner may have been the island of Dilmun (present-day Bahrain), which held a monopoly on the copper trade, but their merchants also undertook months-long journeys to Anatolia and Lebanon to gather cedar wood and to Oman and the Indus Valley for gold and gemstones.
The Sumerians were particularly fond of lapis lazuli—a blue-colored precious stone used in art and jewelry—and there is evidence that they may have roamed as far as Afghanistan to obtain it. Historians have also suggested that Sumerian references to two ancient trading lands known as "Magan" and "Meluhha" may refer to Egypt and Ethiopia.


7. The hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh was probably a real Sumerian historical figure.
One of the crowning achievements of Mesopotamian literature is the "Epic of Gilgamesh," a 3,000-line poem that follows the adventures of a Sumerian king as he battles a forest monster and quests after the secret of eternal life. While the poem's hero is a demigod with Hercules-like strength, most scholars believe he is based on an actual king who served as the fifth ruler of the city of Uruk.
The historical Gilgamesh appears on the Sumerian "King List" and is thought to have lived sometime around 2700 B.C. Few contemporary accounts of his reign have survived to today, but archaeologists have found inscriptions that credit him with building Uruk's massive defensive walls and restoring a temple to the goddess Ninhil. This suggests that he may have been a real ruler whose deeds were later repurposed as myth.


8. Sumerian mathematics and measurements are still used today.
The origins of the sixty-second minute and sixty-minute hour can be traced all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. In the same way that modern mathematics is a decimal system based on the number ten, the Sumerians mainly used a sexigesimal structure that was based around groupings of 60. This easily divisible number system was later adopted by the ancient Babylonians, who used it to make astronomical calculations on the lengths of the months and the year.
Base-60 eventually fell out of use, but its legacy still lives on in the measurements of both the hour and the minute. The division of time into 60 units per hour and 60 seconds per minute can be attributed to this ancient system. Other remnants of the Sumerian sexigesimal system have also survived in the form of spatial measurements, such as the division of a circle into 360 degrees and the use of 12 inches in a foot.


9. Sumerian culture was lost to history until the 19th century.
After Mesopotamia was occupied by the Amorites and Babylonians in the early second millennium B.C., the Sumerians gradually lost their cultural identity and ceased to exist as a political force. All knowledge of their history, language, and technology—even their name—was eventually forgotten. Their secrets remained buried in the deserts of Iraq until the 19th century when French and British archaeologists finally stumbled upon Sumerian artifacts while hunting for evidence of the ancient Assyrians.
Scholars such as Henry Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, Julius Oppert, and Paul Haupt later took the lead in deciphering the Sumerian language and cuneiform, providing historians with their first-ever glimpse of the long-lost history and literature of early Mesopotamia. The decipherment of Sumerian cuneiform opened the door to a wealth of information that had been locked away for millennia.
Since then, archaeologists have recovered numerous pieces of Sumerian art, pottery, and sculpture, as well as an astonishing number of clay tablets, estimated to be around 500,000 in total. However, the vast majority of these clay tablets have yet to be fully translated and studied, holding the potential for even more insights into the Sumerian civilization.
The exploration and ongoing study of Sumerian artifacts and texts continue to shed light on this ancient civilization and its significant contributions to human history.

The story of the Trojan War—the Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece–straddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil. Since the 19th-century rediscovery of the site of Troy in what is now western Turkey, archaeologists have uncovered increasing evidence of a kingdom that peaked and may have been destroyed around 1,180 B.C.—perhaps forming the basis for the tales recounted by Homer some 400 years later in the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.”


According to classical sources, the war began after the abduction (or elopement) of Queen Helen of Sparta by the Trojan prince Paris. Helen’s jilted husband Menelaus convinced his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to lead an expedition to retrieve her. Agamemnon was joined by the Greek heroes Achilles, Odysseus, Nestor and Ajax, and accompanied by a fleet of more than a thousand ships from throughout the Hellenic world. They crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor to lay siege to Troy and demand Helen’s return by Priam, the Trojan king.


Did you know? Some traditions portray Homer as a blind poet, because the name Homer sounds like a word for "blind" in some Greek dialects. In the “Odyssey,” a blind bard appears telling stories of the war, which some interpret as a cameo by the poem's author.


The siege, punctuated by battles and skirmishes including the storied deaths of the Trojan prince Hector and the nearly-invincible Achilles, lasted more than 10 years until the morning the Greek armies retreated from their camp, leaving a large wooden horse outside the gates of Troy. After much debate (and unheeded warnings by Priam’s daughter Cassandra), the Trojans pulled the mysterious gift into the city. When night fell, the horse opened up and a group of Greek warriors, led by Odysseus, climbed out and sacked Troy from within.


After the Trojan defeat, the Greeks heroes slowly made their way home. Odysseus took 10 years to make the arduous and often-interrupted journey home to Ithaca recounted in the “Odyssey.” Helen, whose two successive Trojan husbands were killed during the war, returned to Sparta to reign with Menelaus. After his death, some sources say she was exiled to the island of Rhodes, where a vengeful war widow had her hanged.


Little is known about the historical Homer. Historians date the completion of the “Iliad” to about 750 B.C., and the “Odyssey” to about 725. Both began within the oral tradition, and were first transcribed decades or centuries after their composition. Many of the most familiar episodes of the war, from the abduction of Helen to the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy, come from the so-called “Epic Cycle” of narratives assembled in the sixth century B.C. from older oral traditions.


In the first century B.C. the Roman poet Virgil composed the “Aeneid,” the third great classical epic inspired by the Trojan War. It follows a group of Trojans led by the hero Aeneas who leave their destroyed city to travel to Carthage before founding the city of Rome. Virgil’s aim was in part to give Rome’s first imperial dynasty an origin story as impressive as that of the Greeks.


Many portions of the Trojan War epics are difficult to read historically. Several of the main characters are direct offspring of the Greek gods (Helen was fathered by Zeus, who disguised himself as a swan and raped her mother Leda), and much of the action is guided (or interfered with) by the various competing gods. For example, Paris supposedly won Helen’s love after awarding the Goddess Aphrodite the golden apple for her beauty (“The Judgment of Paris” tells the story of how Paris was asked to select the most beautiful goddess between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite by granting the winner a golden apple). Lengthy sieges were recorded in the era, but the strongest cities could only hold out for a few months, not 10 full years.


Major excavations at the site of Troy in 1870 under the direction of German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann revealed a small citadel mound and layers of debris 25 meters deep. Later studies have document more than 46 building phases grouped into nine bands representing the site’s inhabitation from 3,000 B.C. until its final abandonment in A.D. 1350. Recent excavations have shown an inhabited area 10 times the size of the citadel, making Troy a significant Bronze Age city. Layer VIIa of the excavations, dated to about 1180 B.C., reveals charred debris and scattered skeletons—evidence of a wartime destruction of the city that may have inspired portions of the story of the Trojan War. In Homer’s day, 400 years later, its ruins would have still been visible.
The Punic Wars were a series of three massive conflicts fought between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian (Punic) Empire. At the start, Carthage was the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean, while Rome was a rising land power. By the end, Carthage was erased from the map, and Rome was an unstoppable superpower.


The First Punic War (264–241 BCE):
The conflict began over the island of Sicily. Rome realized they could not defeat Carthage without a navy, but they had no experience at sea.
The Innovation: Rome found a wrecked Carthaginian ship and used it as a blueprint. They added the Corvus (a spiked boarding bridge) to their ships. This allowed Roman soldiers to board enemy ships and turn a sea battle into a land battle.
The Result: Exhausted and bankrupt, Carthage sued for peace. Rome took Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, and forced Carthage to pay a massive fine (indemnity).


The Second Punic War (218–201 BCE):
This is the most famous of the three wars. Seeking revenge, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched a daring invasion of Italy.
The Alps: Hannibal marched an army, including war elephants, over the Alps. Though he lost half his men, the surprise worked.
The Battle of Cannae (216 BCE): Hannibal achieved a "double envelopment," surrounding and slaughtering a much larger Roman army. It remains one of the most brilliant tactical victories in history.
The Turning Point: Rome refused to surrender. They used the Fabian Strategy (avoiding direct battle to wear Hannibal down). Eventually, the Roman general Scipio Africanus invaded North Africa, forcing Hannibal to leave Italy to defend his home.
The Battle of Zama (202 BCE): Scipio defeated Hannibal, ending Carthaginian power forever.


The Third Punic War (149–146 BCE):
Even though Carthage was no longer a military threat, Roman Senator Cato the Elder ended every speech with the phrase "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed).
The Siege: Rome found a technicality to declare war and besieged the city for three years.
The Aftermath: In 146 BCE, Rome broke through. They burned the city to the ground, sold the survivors into slavery, and—according to legend—sowed the fields with salt so nothing would ever grow there again.

The Huns were nomadic warriors who terrorized much of Europe and the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. They were impressive horsemen best known for their astounding military achievements. As they plundered their way across the European continent, the Huns acquired a reputation for being ruthless, indomitable savages.


Hun Origin:
No one knows exactly where the Huns came from. Some scholars believe they originated from the nomad Xiongnu people who entered the historical record in 318 B.C. and terrorized China during the Qin Dynasty and during the later Han Dynasty. The Great Wall of China was reportedly built to help protect against the mighty Xiongnu.
Other historians believe the Huns originated from Kazakhstan, or elsewhere in Asia.
Prior to the 4th century, the Huns traveled in small groups led by chieftains and had no known individual king or leader. They arrived in southeastern Europe around 370 A.D. and conquered one territory after another for over 70 years.


Huns in Life and in Battle:
The Huns were equestrian masters who reportedly revered horses and sometimes slept on horseback. They learned horsemanship as early as age three and, according to legend, their faces were cut at a young age with a sword to teach them to endure pain.
Most Hun soldiers dressed simply but regally outfitted their steeds with saddles and stirrups trimmed in gold, silver and precious stones. They raised livestock but weren’t farmers and seldom settled in one area. They lived off the land as hunter-gatherers, dining on wild game and gathering roots and herbs.
The Huns took a unique approach to warfare. They moved fast and swiftly on the battlefield and fought in seeming disarray, which confused their foes and kept them on the run. They were expert archers who used reflex bows made of seasoned birch, bone and glue. Their arrows could strike a man 80 yards away and seldom missed their mark.
Thanks to their experience of lassoing horses and cattle, the Huns skillfully lassoed their enemies on the battlefield, brutally tearing them off their horses and dragging them to a violent death. They also used battering rams to break through Roman defense walls.
But the Huns’ main weapon was fear. It’s reported that Hun parents placed binders on their children’s heads, which gradually deformed their skulls and gave them a menacing appearance. The Huns killed men, women and children alike and decimated almost everything and everyone in their path. They looted and plundered and seldom took prisoners; however, when they did, they enslaved them.


Huns Reach the Roman Empire:
The Huns came on the historical scene in Europe during the late 4th century A.D when, in 370 A.D., they crossed the Volga River and conquered the Alans, another civilization of nomadic, warring horsemen.
Two years later, they attacked the Ostrogoths, an eastern tribe of Germanic Goths who harassed the Roman Empire by frequently attacking their territories.
By 376, the Huns had attacked the Visigoths (the western tribe of Goths), and forced them to seek sanctuary within the Roman Empire. Some of the Alans, Goths and Visigoths were conscripted into the Hunnic infantry.
As the Huns dominated Goth and Visigoth lands, they earned a reputation as the new barbarians in town and seemed unstoppable. By 395 A.D., they began invading Roman domains. Some Roman Christians believed they were devils who arrived straight from hell.


The Huns Unite:
By 430 A.D., the Hun tribes had united and were ruled by King Rugila and his brother, Octar. But by 432, Octar had been killed in battle and Rugila ruled alone. At one point, Rugila formed a treaty with the Roman Emperor Theodosius in which the Huns received a tribute from Theodosius in exchange for their army’s help in defeating the Goths.
In the 5th century, the Huns changed from a group of nomadic warrior tribes to a somewhat settled civilization living in the Great Hungarian Plain in eastern Europe. They had amassed an enormous army made up of cavalry and infantry troops from various backgrounds.
But if the Romans had thought the Huns were brutal under Rugila’s rule, they hadn’t seen anything yet.


Attila the Hun:
King Rugila died in 434 and was succeeded by his two nephews—brothers Attila and Bleda. Attila was described as a short man with a large head and thin beard who knew both Latin and Goth and was a master negotiator.
Shortly after starting his reign, he negotiated a peace treaty with the Eastern Roman Empire in which the Romans paid him gold in exchange for peace. But eventually the Romans reneged on the deal and in 441, Attila and his army stormed their way through the Balkans and the Danubian frontier.
Another peace treaty was forged in 442, but Attila attacked again in 443, killing, ransacking and pillaging his way to the well-fortified city of Constantinople and earning the nickname, “the scourge of God.”
Unable to break through the walls of the city, Attila formed another peace agreement: he would leave Constantinople alone in exchange for an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold, a staggering sum.
In 445, Attila murdered Bleda—supposedly to prevent Bleda from murdering him first—and became sole ruler of the Huns. He then launched another campaign against the Eastern Roman Empire and thundered his way through the Balkans.


Battle of the Catalaunian Plains:
Attila invaded Gaul, which included modern-day France, northern Italy and western Germany, in 451. But the Romans had wised up and allied with the Visigoths and other barbarian tribes to finally stop the Huns in their tracks.
According to legend, the night before the battle Attila consulted sacrificed bones and saw that thousands of his army would fall in the fight. The next day, his premonition came true.
The foes met on the battlefield in the Catalaunian Plains of eastern France. The Huns put up an impressive fight, but they’d finally met their match. The Romans and Visigoths had learned much from previous encounters with the Huns and fought them hand-to-hand and on horseback.
After hours of ferocious fighting that lasted well into the dark of night, tens of thousands of soldiers were dead, and the Roman alliance had forced the Hun army to retreat. It was Attila’s first and only military defeat.
Attila and his army returned to Italy and continued ravaging cities. In 452, with Rome in sight, he met Pope Leo I who acted as an emissary between Attila and Rome. There’s no record of what they discussed, but according to legend the apparitions of St. Paul and St. Peter appeared to Attila and threatened to kill him if he didn’t negotiate with Pope Leo I.
Whether because of his fear of the Pope and his saintly allies, or simply because his troops were stretched too thin and weakened by malaria, Attila decided to pull out of Italy and return to the Great Hungarian Plain.


Death of Attila:
Attila the Hun may have been an infamous warrior, but he didn’t die a warrior’s death. When Marcian, the new emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, refused to pay Attila a previously-agreed-to annual tribute in 453, Attila regrouped and planned to attack Constantinople.
But before he could strike, he was found dead—on his wedding night after marrying his latest bride—by choking on his own blood while in a drunken stupor.
Attila had made his oldest son Ellac his successor, but all his sons fought a civil war for power until the Hun Empire was divided between them. Without Attila at the helm, however, the weakened Huns fell apart and were no longer a major threat.
By 459, the Hun Empire had collapsed, and many Huns assimilated into the civilizations they’d once dominated, leaving their mark throughout much of Europe.

Sumer was first settled by humans from 4500 to 4000 B.C., though it is probable that some settlers arrived much earlier.


This early population—known as the Ubaid people—was notable for strides in the development of civilization such as farming and raising cattle, weaving textiles, working with carpentry and pottery and even enjoying beer. Villages and towns were built around Ubaid farming communities.


The people known as Sumerians were in control of the area by 3000 B.C. Their culture was comprised of a group of city-states, including Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Kish, Ur and the very first true city, Uruk. At its peak around 2800 BC, the city had a population between 40,000 and 80,000 people living between its six miles of defensive walls, making it a contender for the largest city in the world.


Each city-state of Sumer was surrounded by a wall, with villages settled just outside and distinguished by the worship of local deities.


The Sumerian language is the oldest linguistic record. It first appeared in archaeological records around 3100 B.C. and dominated Mesopotamia for the next thousand years. It was mostly replaced by Akkadian around 2000 B.C. but held on as a written language in cuneiform for another 2,000 years.


Cuneiform, which is used in pictographic tablets, appeared as far back as 4000 B.C., but was later adapted into Akkadian, and expanded even further outside of Mesopotamia beginning in 3000 B.C.


Writing remains one of the most important cultural achievements of the Sumerians, allowing for meticulous record keeping from rulers down to farmers and ranchers. The oldest written laws date back to 2400 B.C. in the city of Ebla, where the Code of Er-Nammu was written on tablets.


The Sumerians were considered to have a rich body of literary works, though only fragments of these documents exist.


Architecture on a grand scale is generally credited to have begun under the Sumerians, with religious structures dating back to 3400 B.C., although it appears that the basics of the structures began in the Ubaid period as far back as 5200 B.C. and were improved upon through the centuries. Homes were made from mud bricks or bundled marsh reeds. The buildings are noted for their arched doorways and flat roofs.


Elaborate construction, such as terracotta ornamentation with bronze accents, complicated mosaics, imposing brick columns and sophisticated mural paintings all reveal the society’s technical sophistication.


Sculpture was used mainly to adorn temples and offer some of the earliest examples of human artists seeking to achieve some form of naturalism in their figures. Facing a scarcity of stone, Sumerians made leaps in metal-casting for their sculpture work, though relief carving in stone was a popular art form.


Under the Akkadian dynasty, sculpture reached new heights, as evidenced by intricate and stylized work in diorite dated to 2100 B.C.


Ziggurats began to appear around 2200 B.C. These impressive pyramid-like, stepped temples, which were either square or rectangular, featured no inner chambers and stood about 170 feet high. Ziggurats often featured sloping sides and terraces with gardens. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of these.


Palaces also reach a new level of grandiosity. In Mari around 1779 B.C., an ambitious 200-room palace was constructed.


Other ancient people made pottery by hand, but the Sumerians were the first to develop the turning wheel, a device which allowed them to mass-produce it. That enabled them to churn out large numbers of items such as containers for workers’ rations, sort of the ancient forerunner of Tupperware.


Primitive people counted using simple methods, such as putting notches on bones, but it was the Sumerians who developed a formal numbering system based on units of 60. At first, they used reeds to keep track of the units, but eventually, with the development of cuneiform, they used vertical marks on the clay tablets. Their system helped lay the groundwork for the mathematical calculations of civilizations that followed. 


The Sumerians figured out how to collect and channel the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—and the rich silt that it contained—and then use it to water and fertilize their farm fields. They designed complex systems of canals, with dams constructed of reeds, palm trunks and mud whose gates could be opened or closed to regulate the flow of water.


The Sumerians didn’t invent wheeled vehicles, but they probably developed the first two-wheeled chariot in which a driver drove a team of animals, writes Richard W. Bulliet in The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions. Goodman says that there’s evidence the Sumerians had such carts for transportation in the 3000s B.C., but they were probably used for ceremonies or by the military, rather than as a means to get around the countryside, where the rough terrain would have made wheeled travel difficult.


The Sumerians invented this vital technology in farming. They even produced a manual that gave farmers detailed instructions on how to use various types of plows. And they specified the prayer that should be recited to pay homage to Ninkilim, the goddess of field rodents, in order to protect the grain from being eaten.


Sumerians were the first to gather wool to be woven into fabric for clothing on an industrial scale. Sumerians were the first to cross kin lines and form larger working organizations for making textiles—the predecessors of modern manufacturing companies.


To make up for a shortage of stones and timber for building houses and temples, the Sumerians created molds for making bricks out of clay. Their buildings might not have been as durable as stone ones, but they were able to build more of them, and create larger cities.


The Sumerians were some of the earliest people to use copper to make useful items, ranging from spearheads to chisels and razors, according to the Copper Development Association. They also made art with copper, including dramatic panels depicting fantastical animals such as an eagle with a lion’s head. 


Primitive people counted using simple methods, such as putting notches on bones, but it was the Sumerians who developed a formal numbering system based on units of 60. At first, they used reeds to keep track of the units, but eventually, with the development of cuneiform, they used vertical marks on the clay tablets. Their system helped lay the groundwork for the mathematical calculations of civilizations that followed. 


Sumerians had a system of medicine that was based in magic and herbalism, but they were also familiar with processes of removing chemical parts from natural substances. They are considered to have had an advanced knowledge of anatomy, and surgical instruments have been found in archeological sites.


One of the Sumerians greatest advances was in the area of hydraulic engineering. Early in their history they created a system of ditches to control flooding, and were also the inventors of irrigation, harnessing the power of the Tigris and Euphrates for farming. Canals were consistently maintained from dynasty to dynasty.


Their skill at engineering and architecture both point to the sophistication of their understanding of math. The structure of modern time keeping, with sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, is attributed to the Sumerians.


Schools were common in Sumerian culture, marking the world’s first mass effort to pass along knowledge in order to keep a society running and building on itself.


Sumerians left behind scores of written records, but they are more renowned for their epic poetry, which influenced later works in Greece and Rome and sections of the Bible, most notably the story of the Great Flood, the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel. The Sumerians were musically inclined and a Sumerian hymn, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” is considered the world’s oldest musically notated song.


The very first ruling body of Sumer that has historical verification is the First Dynasty of Kish. The earliest ruler mentioned is Etana of Kish, who, in a document from the time, is credited as having “stabilized all the lands.” One thousand years later, Etana would be memorialized in a poem that told of his adventures in heaven.


The most famous of the early Sumerian rulers is Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who took control around 2700 B.C. and is still remembered for his fictional adventures in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first epic poem in history and inspiration for later Roman and Greek myths and Biblical stories.


A devastating flood in the region was used as a pivotal point in the epic poem and later reused in the Old Testament story of Noah.


Somewhere around 2600 B.C., a power struggle erupted between the leaders of Kish, Erech and Ur, which set off a “musical-chairs” scenario of rulers for the region for the next 400 years.


The first conflict resulted in the kingdom of Awan seizing control and shifting the ruling body outside of Sumer until the kingship was returned to the Kish.


The Kish kept control briefly until the rise of Uruk King Enshakushanna, whose brief dynasty was followed by Adabian conqueror Lugalannemundu, who held power for 90 years and is said to have expanded his kingdom up to the Mediterranean. Lugalannemundu also conquered the Gutian people, who lived in the Eastern Iraqi mountains and who would later come to rule Sumer.


In 2500 B.C. the only woman to rule the Sumerians, Kubaba, took the throne. She is the only female listed on the Sumerian King List, which names all rulers of Sumer and their accomplishments. Kubaba’s son, Puzur-Suen, eventually reigned, bringing in the fourth dynasty of Kish, following a brief ascendency of Unzi, the first in the Akshak Dynasty.


This last Kish dynasty ruled for a century before Uruk king Lugal-zage-si ruled for 25 years before Sargon took control in 2234.


Sargon was an Akkadian whose past is shrouded in legends that some claim were ignited by Sargon himself. The claim is that he was the secret child of a high priestess who placed him in a basket and cast him off into a river, a story that was later utilized for Moses in the Old Testament.


Sumerian tradition says that Sargon was the son of a gardener who rose to the position of cupbearer for Ur-Zababa, king of Kish, which was not a servant position but a high official.


Ur-Zababa was defeated by the king of Uruk, who was, in turn, overtaken by Sargon. Sargon followed that victory by seizing the cities of Ur, Umma and Lagash, and establishing himself as ruler. His militaristic reign reached to the Persian Gulf.


Sargon built the city of Agade as his base, south of Kish, which became an important center in the ancient world and a prominent port. Agade was also home to Sargon’s army, which is considered the first organized standing army in history and the earliest to use chariots in warfare.


Sargon took control of the religious cultures of the Akkadians and the Sumerians, making his daughter Enhedu-anna the head priestess of the moon god cult of Ur. Enheduanna is best remembered for her transcriptions of temple hymns, which she also wrote and preserved in her writings.


Sargon ruled for 50 years, and after his death, his son Rimush faced widespread rebellion and was killed. Rimush’s brother Manishtushu met the same fate.


Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin, took the throne in 2292 B.C. Naram-Sin considered himself divine and was leveled with charges of sacrilege.


The Gutians invaded in 2193 B.C. following the reign of the last Akkadian king, Naram-Sin’s son Sharkalisharri. Their era is marked by decentralized chaos and neglect. It was during Gutian reign that the grand city of Agade decayed into wreckage and disappeared from history.


The final gasp of Sumer leadership came in 2100 B.C. when Utuhegal, king of Ur, overthrew the Gutians. Utuhegal’s reign was brief, with Ur-Nammu, the former governor of Ur, taking the throne, starting a dynasty that would rule for about a century.


Ur-Nammu was known as a builder. Figurines from the time depict him carrying building materials. During his reign, he started massive projects to build walls around his capital city, to create more irrigation canals, construct new temples and rebuild old ones.


Ur-Nammu also did the considerable work of constructing an organized and complicated legal code that is considered the first in history. Its purpose was to ensure that everyone in the kingdom, no matter what city they lived in, received the same justice and punishments, rather than rely on the whims of individual governors.


Ur-Nammu also created an organized school system for state administrators. Called the Edubba, it kept an archive of clay tablets for learning.


In 2004 B.C., the Elamites stormed Ur and took control. At the same time, Amorites had begun overtaking the Sumerian population.


The ruling Elamites were eventually absorbed into Amorite culture, becoming the Babylonians and marking the end of the Sumerians as a distinct body from the rest of Mesopotamia.

Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy, Socrates (469-399 B.C.) is at once the most exemplary and the strangest of the Greek philosophers. He grew up during the golden age of Pericles’ Athens, served with distinction as a soldier, but became best known as a questioner of everything and everyone. His style of teaching—immortalized as the Socratic method—involved not conveying knowledge, but rather asking question after clarifying question until his students arrived at their own understanding. 
Socrates wrote nothing himself, so all that is known about him is filtered through the writings of a few contemporaries and followers, most notably his student Plato. Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death. Choosing not to flee, he spent his final days in the company of his friends before drinking the executioner’s cup of poisonous hemlock.


Socrates: Early Years
Socrates was born and lived nearly his entire life in Athens. His father Sophroniscus was a stonemason and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. As a youth, he showed an appetite for learning. Plato describes him eagerly acquiring the writings of the leading contemporary philosopher Anaxagoras and says he was taught rhetoric by Aspasia, the talented mistress of the great Athenian leader Pericles.
Did you know? Although he never outright rejected the standard Athenian view of religion, Socrates' beliefs were nonconformist. He often referred to God rather than the gods, and reported being guided by an inner divine voice.
His family apparently had the moderate wealth required to launch Socrates’ career as a hoplite (foot soldier). As an infantryman, Socrates showed great physical endurance and courage, rescuing the future Athenian leader Alcibiades during the siege of Potidaea in 432 B.C. 
Through the 420s, Socrates was deployed for several battles in the Peloponnesian War, but also spent enough time in Athens to become known and beloved by the city’s youth. In 423 he was introduced to the broader public as a caricature in Aristophanes’ play “Clouds,” which depicted him as an unkempt buffoon whose philosophy amounted to teaching rhetorical tricks for getting out of debt.


Philosophy of Socrates
Although many of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem unfair, Socrates cut a strange figure in Athens, going about barefoot, long-haired and unwashed in a society with incredibly refined standards of beauty. It didn’t help that he was by all accounts physically ugly, with an upturned nose and bulging eyes. 
Despite his intellect and connections, he rejected the sort of fame and power that Athenians were expected to strive for. His lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied his spirit of questioning every assumption about virtue, wisdom and the good life.
Two of his younger students, the historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato, recorded the most significant accounts of Socrates’ life and philosophy. For both, the Socrates that appears bears the mark of the writer. Thus, Xenophon’s Socrates is more straightforward, willing to offer advice rather than simply asking more questions. In Plato’s later works, Socrates speaks with what seem to be largely Plato’s ideas. 
In the earliest of Plato’s “Dialogues”—considered by historians to be the most accurate portrayal—Socrates rarely reveals any opinions of his own as he brilliantly helps his interlocutors dissect their thoughts and motives in Socratic dialogue, a form of literature in which two or more characters (in this case, one of them Socrates) discuss moral and philosophical issues.
One of the greatest paradoxes that Socrates helped his students explore was whether weakness of will—doing wrong when you genuinely knew what was right—ever truly existed. He seemed to think otherwise: people only did wrong when at the moment the perceived benefits seemed to outweigh the costs. Thus the development of personal ethics is a matter of mastering what he called “the art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that skew one’s analyses of benefit and cost.
Socrates was also deeply interested in understanding the limits of human knowledge. When he was told that the Oracle at Delphi had declared that he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates balked until he realized that, although he knew nothing, he was (unlike his fellow citizens) keenly aware of his own ignorance.


Trial and Death of Socrates
Socrates avoided political involvement where he could and counted friends on all sides of the fierce power struggles following the end of the Peloponnesian War. In 406 B.C. his name was drawn to serve in Athens’ assembly, or ekklesia, one of the three branches of ancient Greek democracy known as demokratia. 
Socrates became the lone opponent of an illegal proposal to try a group of Athens’ top generals for failing to recover their dead from a battle against Sparta (the generals were executed once Socrates’ assembly service ended). Three years later, when a tyrannical Athenian government ordered Socrates to participate in the arrest and execution of Leon of Salamis, he refused—an act of civil disobedience that Martin Luther King Jr. would cite in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
The tyrants were forced from power before they could punish Socrates, but in 399 he was indicted for failing to honor the Athenian gods and for corrupting the young. Although some historians suggest that there may have been political machinations behind the trial, he was condemned on the basis of his thought and teaching. In his “The Apology of Socrates,” Plato recounts him mounting a spirited defense of his virtue before the jury but calmly accepting their verdict. It was in court that Socrates allegedly uttered the now-famous phrase, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
His execution was delayed for 30 days due to a religious festival, during which the philosopher’s distraught friends tried unsuccessfully to convince him to escape from Athens. On his last day, Plato says, he “appeared both happy in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear.” He drank the cup of brewed hemlock his executioner handed him, walked around until his legs grew numb and then lay down, surrounded by his friends, and waited for the poison to reach his heart.


The Socratic Legacy
Socrates is unique among the great philosophers in that he is portrayed and remembered as a quasi-saint or religious figure. Indeed, nearly every school of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the Skeptics to the Stoics to the Cynics, desired to claim him as one of their own (only the Epicurians dismissed him, calling him “the Athenian buffoon”). 
Since all that is known of his philosophy is based on the writing of others, the Socratic problem, or Socratic question–reconstructing the philosopher’s beliefs in full and exploring any contradictions in second-hand accounts of them–remains an open question facing scholars today.
Socrates and his followers expanded the purpose of philosophy from trying to understand the outside world to trying to tease apart one’s inner values. His passion for definitions and hair-splitting questions inspired the development of formal logic and systematic ethics from the time of Aristotle through the Renaissance and into the modern era. 
Moreover, Socrates’ life became an exemplar of the difficulty and the importance of living (and if necessary dying) according to one’s well-examined beliefs. In his 1791 autobiography Benjamin Franklin reduced this notion to a single line: “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

1. Opus Caementicium (Roman Concrete)
The Secret Ingredient: The key was Pozzolana, a volcanic ash found near Mount Vesuvius (specifically Pozzuoli). When mixed with lime and water, it created a chemical reaction that allowed the concrete to set even underwater. It formed a rock-like material that was much stronger and more durable than modern Portland cement in saltwater environments.
Interior Revolution: Traditional Greek architecture used "Post-and-Lintel" (vertical columns holding up horizontal beams). This required many columns to support a roof, resulting in cramped, dark interiors. Concrete allowed the Romans to build massive, unobstructed spaces (like the Pantheon or the Baths of Caracalla) because the material could be molded into arches and domes that supported their own weight.


2. The Arch, Vault, and Dome
The Keystone: This is the wedge-shaped stone at the very apex of the arch. It is the final piece placed during construction; it locks all other stones (voussoirs) into place by transferring the weight of the structure into a downward and outward force.
Weight Management: A flat beam (lintel) tends to crack in the middle if it is too long. An arch redirects the force of gravity into a curve, pushing the stress onto the supporting pillars (piers). A Vault is essentially a series of arches joined together to form a tunnel, while a Dome is an arch rotated 360 degrees.
The Pantheon & Oculus: The oculus is the 9-meter hole at the top of the dome.
Structural: It removes the heaviest part of the dome (the center top) where the weight would be most likely to cause a collapse.
Symbolic: It acted as a sundial and represented the eye of the gods, connecting the temple to the heavens.


3. The Road System (Via)
Layers: 1. Statumen: A foundation of large, heavy stones. 2. Rudus: A layer of smaller stones or broken pottery mixed with lime. 3. Nucleus: Fine gravel or sand to provide a level bed. 4. Summum Dorsum: The top layer of fitted polygonal basalt or paving stones, slightly curved (cambered) to allow rainwater to run off into ditches.
"All Roads Lead to Rome": This was a military strategy. Roads were built straight across terrain (ignoring hills or swamps) to allow the Legions to march at high speeds to any part of the Empire to suppress revolts or defend borders. They also facilitated the Cursus Publicus (state-run courier system).


4. Aqueducts & Gravity
Engineering: Romans used a gradient system. The water source (springs or lakes) had to be higher than the destination. Engineers used a tool called a chorobates to ensure the channel sloped downward consistently—sometimes dropping only 1.5 meters over an entire kilometer.
Urban Health: Aqueducts enabled:
Public Baths (Thermae): Central to Roman social and hygienic life.
Fountains: Provided free, clean drinking water to the poor.
Sewage Flushing: Constantly running water flushed waste into the Cloaca Maxima.


5. The Hypocaust System
Function: This was an early form of central heating. The floor of a room was raised on brick pillars (pilae stacks). A furnace (praefurnium) outside the room burned wood or charcoal, and the hot air and smoke were drawn into the space under the floor and up through ceramic tiles (tubuli) in the walls, heating the stone surfaces.
Social Class: Primarily used in public baths and the private villas of the wealthy (patricians).


6. Military & Medical Advancements
Battle Surgery: Roman military medicine was the most advanced in the world until the 19th century.
Innovations:
Hemostatic Tourniquets: Used to stop blood loss during amputations.
The Valetudinarium: Dedicated military hospitals located at forts.
Sanitization: They realized that boiling medical tools in water before use helped prevent infection (though they didn't know about "germs" yet).


7. Legacy Case Studies
Julian Calendar: Introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC to align the year with the sun. It is the direct ancestor of our modern Gregorian calendar.
Roman Law: The "Twelve Tables" established that laws must be written and public. This influenced the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty."
Acta Diurna: Considered the first "newspaper," these were daily notices carved on stone or metal and posted in public places to inform citizens of news and legal proceedings.

The Roman Republic, lasting from 509 BC to 27 BC, emerged after the expulsion of the last Roman king, Tarquinius Superbus . This expulsion was triggered by abuses, notably the assault on Lucretia, a Roman elite's wife, by the king's son . In place of the king, political offices called magistracies were created and held by the Roman elite to govern Rome . The Roman Senate was the governing and advisory assembly of the aristocracy in the ancient Roman Republic . It evolved from the Senate of the Roman Kingdom and later became the Senate of the Roman Empire .


Unlike modern elected bodies, the Senate was composed of members appointed by the consuls and later by the censors . These censors were themselves appointed by the aristocratic Centuriate Assembly . Typically, a Roman magistrate's term in office was followed by an automatic appointment to the Senate . The Senate's power and authority stemmed from precedent, the senators' high caliber and prestige, and its unbroken lineage dating back to the Republic's founding in 509 BC .


According to Polybius, a Greek historian and key source on the Roman Republic's constitution, the Senate was the predominant branch of government . While consuls led armies and civil government, and assemblies held authority over elections, legislation, and trials, the Senate controlled finances, administration, and foreign policy, giving it significant control over daily life .


Initially, consuls appointed and removed senators, but around 318 BC, the "Ovinian Plebiscite" transferred this power to the censor . This law also mandated that censors appoint newly elected magistrates to the Senate, resulting in automatic Senate membership after election to a magisterial office . Appointments were for life, though censors could impeach senators .


The Senate played a crucial role in directing magistrates, especially consuls, in military conflicts . It also wielded considerable power over Rome's civil government, particularly in managing state finances, as it alone could authorize disbursal of public funds . The Senate also issued decrees known as senatus consulta . The Roman Senate functioned as an advisory body to Rome's magistrates and was composed of the city's most experienced public servants and society's elite . Its decisions carried great weight, even if these were not always converted into laws in practice .


The term "senatus" comes from "senex," meaning "old," reflecting the idea of an "assembly of old men" known for their wisdom and experience . Members were sometimes called "fathers" or "patres," highlighting the Senate's role in providing reasoned guidance to the Roman state . Tradition holds that Rome's founder, Romulus, created the first 100-member Senate as an advisory body to the sovereign, but its early role as a monarchy is not well-documented . In the early Republic, the Senate likely began as an advisory board to magistrates and grew in power as retired magistrates joined . The lex Ovinia (after 339 BCE but before 318 BCE) stipulated that members should be recruited from the 'best men' . Censors compiled a new list of members every five years, but senators typically held their roles for life unless they committed a dishonorable act .


From the 3rd century BCE, the Senate had 300 members, increasing to around 500 after Sulla's reforms in 81 BCE . Julius Caesar later expanded membership further, including supporters and individuals from cities outside Rome . Senators in the first century AD held much less power than their predecessors, although the Senate still had the right to confer the title of emperor . This alone ensured that the Senate and its members remained relevant and important .


To become a senator, Roman citizens aged 25 or older needed both military and administrative experience to become quaestors, the lowest rung on the government ladder . Potential candidates were nominated by the emperor, making elections largely a formality . Ambitious senators would then progress through the ranks of magistrates, including quaestorship, aedileship, praetorship, and ultimately, consulship, with each position determining their senatorial rank . Senators enjoyed special privileges, including holding the highest official offices and judgeships, reserved seating at public ceremonies, and the honor of wearing the latus clavus, a purple-striped toga .

The Athenian philosopher Plato (c. 428-347 B.C.) is one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.
The Academy he founded was by some accounts the world’s first university and in it he trained his greatest student, the equally influential philosopher Aristotle. Plato’s recurring fascination was the distinction between ideal forms and everyday experience, and how it played out both for individuals and for societies. In the “Republic,” his most famous work, he envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetites but by the pure wisdom of a philosopher-king.


Plato: Early Life and Education
Plato was born around 428 B.C., during the final years of the Golden Age of Pericles’ Athens. He was of noble Athenian lineage on both sides. His father Ariston died when Plato was a child. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes. Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404) and came of age around the time of Athens’ final defeat by Sparta and the political chaos that followed. He was educated in philosophy, poetry and gymnastics by distinguished Athenian teachers including the philosopher Cratylus.


Plato's Influences
The young Plato became a devoted follower of Socrates—indeed, he was one of the youths Socrates was condemned for allegedly corrupting. Plato’s recollections of Socrates’ lived-out philosophy and style of relentless questioning, the Socratic method, became the basis for his early dialogues. Plato’s dialogues, along with “Apologia,” his written account of the trial of Socrates, are viewed by historians as the most accurate available picture of the elder philosopher, who left no written works of his own.
Following Socrates’ forced suicide, Plato spent 12 years traveling in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt, studying with other philosophers including followers of the mystic mathematician Pythagoras including Theodorus of Cyrene (creator of the spiral of Theodorus or Pythagorean spiral), Archytas of Tarentum and Echecrates of Phlius. Plato’s time among the Pythagoreans piqued his interest in mathematics.
Plato’s Theory of Forms, stating that the physical world we know is but a shadow of the real one, was strongly influenced by Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. The two appear as characters in Plato’s dialogue “The Parmenides.”
Plato had a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, who would later seek his advice on reforming their city’s politics.


Platonic Academy
Around 387, the 40-year-old Plato returned to Athens and founded his philosophical school in the grove of the Greek hero Academus, just outside the city walls. In his open-air Academy he delivered lectures to students gathered from throughout the Greek world (nine-tenths of them from outside Athens). 
Did you know? The section on music in Plato's "Republic" suggests that in an ideal society flutes would be banned in favor of the more dignified lyre, but on his deathbed Plato reportedly summoned a young girl to play her flute for him, tapping out the rhythm with his finger while he breathed his last.
Many of Plato’s writings, especially the so-called later dialogues, seem to have originated in his teaching there. In establishing the Academy Plato moved beyond the precepts of Socrates, who never founded a school and questioned the very idea of a teacher’s ability to impart knowledge.
Aristotle arrived from northern Greece to join the Academy at age 17, studying and teaching there for the last 20 years of Plato’s life. Plato died in Athens, and was probably buried on the Academy grounds.


Plato's Dialogues
With the exception of a set of letters of dubious provenance, all of Plato’s surviving writings are in dialogue form, with the character of Socrates appearing in all but one of them. His 36 dialogues are generally ordered into early, middle and late, though their chronology is determined by style and content rather than specific dates. 
The earliest of Plato’s dialogues offer a deep exploration of Socrates’ dialectic method of breaking down and analyzing ideas and presumptions. In the “Euthpyro,” Socrates’ endless questioning pushes a religious expert to realize that he has no understanding of what “piety” means. Such analyses pushed his students towards grappling with so-called Platonic forms—the ineffable perfect models (truth, beauty, what a chair should look like) by which people judge objects and experiences. 
In the middle dialogues, Plato’s individual ideas and beliefs, though never advocated outright, emerge from the Socratic form. The “Symposium” is a series of drinking-party speeches on the nature of love, in which Socrates says the best thing to do with romantic desire is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking (an idea termed “Platonic love” by later writers). In the “Meno,” Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is less a matter of learning things than “recollecting” what the soul already knows, in the way that an untaught boy can be led to discover for himself a geometric proof. 
The monumental “Republic” is a parallel exploration of the soul of a nation and of an individual. In both, Plato finds a three-part hierarchy between rulers, auxiliaries and citizens and between reason, emotion and desire. Just as reason should reign supreme in the individual, so should a wise ruler control a society. 
Only those with wisdom (ideally a sort of “philosopher-king”) are able to discern the true nature of things. The experiences of the lower tiers of the state and of the soul are—as Plato’s famous analogy has it—related to true knowledge the way the shadows on the wall of a cave are related to, yet wholly different from, the forms that cast them. 
Plato’s late dialogues are barely dialogues at all but rather explorations of specific topics. The “Timeaus” explains a cosmology intertwined with geometry, in which perfected three-dimensional shapes—cubes, pyramids, icosahedrons—are the “Platonic solids” out of which the whole universe is made. In the “Laws,” his final dialogue, Plato retreats from the pure theory of the “Republic,” suggesting that experience and history as well as wisdom can inform the running of an ideal state. 

The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from 431 to 405 B.C. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the end of what is considered the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.


The Cause of the Peloponnesian War:
The formation of the Delian League, or Athenian League, in 478 B.C. united several Greek city-states in a military alliance under Athens, ostensibly to guard against revenge attacks from the Persian Empire. In reality, the league also granted increased power and prestige to Athens. The Spartans, meanwhile, were part of the Peloponnesian League (550 BC- 366 B.C.) of city-states. It was only a matter of time before the two powerful leagues collided.
The Great Peloponnesian War, also called the First Peloponnesian War, was the first major scuffle between them. It became a 15-year conflict between Athens and Sparta and their allies. Peace was decreed by the signing of the Thirty Years Treaty in 445 B.C., effective until 437 B.C., when the Peloponnesian War began.
A civil war in the obscure country of Epidamnus led to the involvement of Sparta’s ally, Corinth. When Sparta was brought in to be part of conflict negotiations, Corinth’s longtime enemy Corcyra targeted Epidamnus and seized it in a naval battle. Corinth retreated to rebuild its fleet and plan retaliation.
Did you know? The Athenians experienced a major setback when a plague broke out in 430 B.C. Between one-third and two-thirds of the Athenian population died, including the prominent general Pericles.


The Peloponnesian War Begins:
In 433 B.C. the tension continued to build and Corcyra officially sought Athens’ support by arguing that conflict with Sparta was inevitable and Athens required an alliance with Corcyra to defend itself. The Athenian government debated the suggestion, but its leader Pericles suggested a defensive alliance with Corcya, sending a small number of ships to protect it against Corinthian forces.
All forces met at the Battle of Sybota, in which Corinth, with no support from Sparta, attacked and then retreated at the sight of Athenian ships. Athens, convinced it was about to enter war with Corinth, strengthened its military hold on its various territories in the region to prepare.
Sparta was hesitant to enter the war directly, but was eventually convinced by Corinth to do so, though this was not a popular decision among Sparta’s other allies. A year passed before Sparta took aggressive action. During that time, Sparta sent three delegations to Athens to avoid war, offering proposals that could be viewed as a betrayal of Corinth. These efforts conflicted with Pericles’ agenda and the Athenians rejected peace.


Athens vs. Sparta:
The first 10 years of the conflict are known as “Archidamian War,” after Spartan King Archidamus. The Spartan slogan for that period was “Freedom for the Greeks,” and its stated aim was to liberate the states under Athenian rule by destroying its defenses and dismantling its structure.
As Spartan forces surrounded Athens in a siege, decimating the countryside and farmland, Pericles declined to engage against them near the city’s walls, instead leading naval campaigns elsewhere. He returned to Athens in 430 B.C. as a plague ravaged the city, killing nearly two-thirds of the population. Pericles, following a political uprising that led to his censure, succumbed to the plague in 429 B.C., fracturing the Athenian leadership. Despite this major setback for the Athenians, the Spartans saw only mixed success in their war efforts, and some major losses in western Greece and at sea.


The Peace of Nicias:
In 423 B.C., both sides signed a treaty known as the Peace of Nicias, named for the Athenian general who engineered it. Meant to last 50 years, it barely survived eight, undermined by conflict and rebellion brought on by various allies.


Second Phase of War:
War reignited decisively around 415 B.C. when Athens received a call to help allies in Sicily against invaders from Syracuse, where an Athenian official defected to Sparta, convincing them that Athens was planning to conquer Italy. Sparta sided with Syracuse and defeated the Athenians in a major sea battle.


Who Won the Peloponnesian War:
Athens did not crumble as expected, winning a string of naval victories against Sparta, which sought monetary and weapons support from the Persian Empire. Under the Spartan general Lysander, the war raged for another decade. By in 405 B.C. Lysander decimated the Athenian fleet in battle and then held Athens under siege, forcing it to surrender to Sparta in 404 B.C.


Impact of the Peloponnesian War:
The Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece, a change in styles of warfare and the fall of Athens, once the strongest city-state in Greece. The balance in power in Greece was shifted when Athens was absorbed into the Spartan Empire. It continued to exist under a series of tyrants and then a democracy. Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon.

Hatshepsut: Egypt’s Female Pharaoh
Ruled during the 18th Dynasty (c. 1479–1458 BCE).
One of the few female pharaohs, she strengthened Egypt’s economy through trade.
Built the impressive mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari.
Her successor, Thutmose III, attempted to erase her legacy by removing her images and inscriptions.


Thutmose III: The Warrior Pharaoh
Ruled after Hatshepsut (c. 1479–1425 BCE) and expanded Egypt’s empire through military conquests.
Conducted successful campaigns in the Levant and Nubia, making Egypt a dominant power.
Known for his tactical brilliance and extensive building projects.


Akhenaten: The Heretic Pharaoh
Ruled during the 18th Dynasty (c. 1353–1336 BCE).
Introduced monotheism, worshiping only Aten, the sun disk.
Built the city of Akhetaten (Amarna) as the center of this new religion.
His religious changes were reversed after his death, and his successor, Tutankhamun, restored traditional polytheism.


Ramses II: The Great Builder
Ruled during the 19th Dynasty (c. 1279–1213 BCE), known as Ramses the Great.
Led military campaigns against the Hittites and signed one of the first known peace treaties.
Constructed grand monuments, including the Abu Simbel temples and additions to Karnak and Luxor.
Had a long reign of 66 years and left behind a vast number of statues and inscriptions.

As the first Roman emperor (though he never claimed the title for himself), Augustus led Rome’s transformation from republic to empire during the tumultuous years following the assassination of his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar. He shrewdly combined military might, institution-building and lawmaking to become Rome’s sole ruler, laying the foundations of the 200-year Pax Romana (Roman Peace) and an empire that lasted, in various forms, for nearly 1,500 years.


Augustus - Birth and Inheritance:
Of Augustus’ many names and honorifics, historians favor three of them, each for a different phase in the emperor’s life. From his birth in 63 B.C. he was Octavius; after his adoption was announced in 44 B.C., Octavian; and beginning in 26 B.C. the Roman Senate conferred on him the name Augustus, the august or exalted one. He was born Gaius Octavius Thurinus in Velletri, 20 miles from Rome. His father was a senator and governor in the Roman Republic. His mother Atai was Caesar’s niece, and the young Octavius was raised in part by his grandmother Julia Ceasaris, Caesar’s sister.
Did you know? In 8 B.C. Augustus had the Roman month of Sextilius renamed after himself—as his great-uncle and predecessor Julius Caesar had done with July. August was the month of several of the emperor's greatest victories, including the defeat and suicide of Antony and Cleopatra. He did not increase the month's length, which had been 31 days since the establishment of the Julian calendar in 45 B.C.
Octavius donned the toga, the Roman sign of manhood, at age 16, and began taking on responsibilities through his family connections. In 47 B.C. he went to Hispania (modern-day Spain) to fight alongside Caesar. He was shipwrecked along the way, and had to cross enemy territory to reach his great-uncle—an act that impressed Caesar enough to name Octavius his heir and successor in his will.


Augustus - The Path to Power:
The 17-year-old Octavius was at Apollonia (in present-day Albania) when the news of Caesar’s death and his own inheritance arrived. The dead ruler’s allies, including many in the senate, rallied around Octavian against their powerful rival Mark Antony. But after Octavian’s troops defeated Antony’s army in northern Italy, the future emperor refused an all-out pursuit of Antony, preferring an uneasy alliance with his rival.
In 43 B.C. Octavian, Antony and Marcus Aemilus Lepidus established the Second Triumvirate, a power-sharing agreement that divided up Rome’s territories among them, with Antony given the East, Lepidus Africa and Octavian the West. In 41 B.C. Antony began a romantic and political alliance with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, which continued even after a Senatorial decree forced his marriage to Octavian’s sister Octavia Minor. Lepidus remained a minor figure until Octavian finally had him ousted after the triumvirate’s renewal in 37 B.C.
Antony’s affair with Cleopatra continued, and in 32 B.C. he divorced Octavia. In retaliation, Octavian declared war on Cleopatra. In the naval battle of Actium a year later, Octavian’s fleet, under his admiral Agrippa, cornered and defeated Antony’s ships. Cleopatra’s navy raced to aid her ally, but in the end the two lovers barely escaped. They returned to Egypt and committed suicide, leaving Octavian as Rome’s undisputed ruler.
During 200 years of relative peace and prosperity, the Roman Empire reached the peak of its political and economic power.


Augustus - Emperor in All but Name:
Historians date the start of Octavian’s monarchy to either 31 B.C. (the victory at Actium) or 27 B.C., when he was granted the name Augustus. In that four-year span, Octavian secured his rule on multiple fronts. Cleopatra’s seized treasure allowed him to pay his soldiers, securing their loyalty. To mollify Rome’s Senate and ruling classes, he passed laws harkening back—at least on the surface—to the traditions of the Roman Republic. And to win over the people, he worked to improve and beautify the city of Rome.
During his 40-years reign, Augustus nearly doubled the size of the empire, adding territories in Europe and Asia Minor and securing alliances that gave him effective rule from Britain to India. He spent much of his time outside of Rome, consolidating power in the provinces and instituting a system of censuses and taxation that integrated the empire’s furthest reaches. He expanded the Roman network of roads, founded the Praetorian Guard and the Roman postal service and remade Rome with both grand (a new forum) and practical gestures (police and fire departments).


Augustus - Family and Succession:
Augustus married three times, although his first union, to Mark Antony’s stepdaughter Clodia Pulchra, was unconsummated. His second wife, Scribonia, bore his only child, Julia the Elder. He divorced in 39 B.C. to marry Livia Drusilla, who had two sons—Tiberius and Drusus—by her first husband, Mark Antony’s ally Tiberius Claudius Nero. The family tree became more complicated after Augustus had his stepson Tiberius briefly marry his daughter, and then adopted Tiberius outright as son and successor in A.D. 4.
Augustus Caesar died in A.D. 14, his empire secured and at peace. His reported last words were twofold: to his subjects he said, “I found Rome of clay; I leave it to you of marble,” but to the friends who had stayed with him in his rise to power he added, “Have I played the part well? Then applaud me as I exit.” Soon after that acknowledgement of human frailty, the Roman Senate officially declared their departed emperor, like Julius Caesar before him, to be a god.

The Mycenaean civilization, flourishing from approximately 1600-1100 BC, represents a crucial chapter in ancient Aegean history. Understanding their art, culture, and eventual decline provides valuable insight into the foundations of later Greek society. The Mycenaeans, along with the Minoans, laid the groundwork for many aspects of Greek culture.


Mycenaean civilization emerged in mainland Greece, heavily influenced by the earlier Minoan culture of Crete. They were known for their impressive architectural achievements, including fortified citadels and elaborate palaces. These structures reflect a society organized around powerful rulers and a warrior elite.


Mycenaean art offers a glimpse into their values and beliefs. While influenced by Minoan styles, Mycenaean art often emphasized warfare and hunting scenes, reflecting a more militaristic society. Their craftsmanship is evident in their pottery, metalwork, and intricate jewelry.


The Mycenaeans were also skilled traders, establishing networks throughout the Mediterranean. Their trade routes facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas, contributing to their economic prosperity and cultural influence. Archaeological evidence suggests they interacted with various cultures, leaving their mark on the ancient world.


However, the Mycenaean civilization eventually declined around 1100 BC. The reasons for this collapse are complex and debated by historians. Some theories point to internal conflicts, such as wars between Mycenaean city-states. Others suggest external factors, such as invasions by other groups or environmental changes.


The decline of the Mycenaeans ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages. This era saw significant cultural and social transformations, including the rise of city-states and the emergence of foundational elements of Greek culture. The Greek alphabet, Geometric art, and the Olympic Games all have roots in this period.


Despite their decline, the Mycenaeans left a lasting legacy on Greek culture and history. Their architectural achievements, artistic styles, and trade networks influenced subsequent generations. Understanding the Mycenaean civilization is essential for comprehending the development of ancient Greece and its contributions to Western civilization.

Introduction:
Mongolia, located in East Asia, holds a rich history deeply intertwined with its nomadic lifestyle, conquests, and cultural heritage. The Mongolian civilization is renowned for its vast empire, led by figures like Genghis Khan, which at its peak, stretched from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. Today, Mongolia preserves its unique traditions while embracing modernity.


Geography:
Mongolia is a landlocked country bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east, and west.
The terrain consists of vast steppes, deserts, mountains, and grasslands, shaping the nomadic lifestyle of its inhabitants.


History:
The Mongolian Empire, founded by Genghis Khan in the 13th century, became the largest contiguous empire in history.
Under Genghis Khan and his successors, the empire expanded rapidly through conquests, trade, and diplomacy.
The empire facilitated cultural exchange along the Silk Road, connecting East and West.
Following the decline of the empire, Mongolia fell under Chinese and later Soviet influence before gaining independence in 1921.


Culture:
Nomadic lifestyle: Traditional Mongolian culture revolves around nomadic pastoralism, with people herding livestock across the vast steppes.
Naadam Festival: An annual event celebrating the "Three Manly Games" of wrestling, horse racing, and archery, reflecting Mongolian heritage and martial prowess.
Traditional arts: Mongolian art includes intricate crafts like throat singing, morin khuur (horsehead fiddle) music, and colorful traditional clothing like the deel.


Modern Mongolia:
Mongolia is transitioning from its socialist past to a market economy, with a growing focus on industries like mining, agriculture, and tourism.
Ulaanbaatar, the capital, is the political, cultural, and economic center of the country, experiencing rapid urbanization.
Challenges include environmental degradation, rural depopulation, and preserving traditional culture amidst globalization.

Macedon, a kingdom north of Greece, was initially viewed by the Greeks as somewhat barbaric. Despite this perception, Macedon would rise to become a dominant force in the ancient world, largely due to the military and political reforms of King Philip II. His reign marked a turning point, transforming Macedon from a fragmented kingdom into a powerful, unified state.


Before Philip II, Macedon was often in disarray. In 360 BCE, the king was killed, and Balkan tribes overran much of the territory. Philip, the king's younger brother, stepped up to take control and initiated reforms that would reshape the Macedonian army into a formidable war machine.


One of Philip's key achievements was improving the effectiveness of the peasant foot soldiers. Using funds from silver mines, he introduced standardized weapons and instilled the discipline of the phalanx formation. Within two years, he expanded the Macedonian army to over 10,000 soldiers and drove out the invaders. This victory not only strengthened the monarchy but also balanced the political influence of the nobility by creating a newly effective infantry.


Over the next two decades, Philip continued to reform both the organization and weaponry of his army. He transformed the Macedonian nobles into a well-trained and disciplined heavy cavalry force, organized by territorial squadrons. These nobles were given the title "Companions" (hetairai) to emphasize their social and political connection to the king, fostering their loyalty to a more centralized military system and reducing their independent power within the kingdom. The Companions were equipped with armor and a shorter version of the infantry sarissa (pike), making them well-suited for fighting on horseback. This mobile offensive strike force was unmatched in quality by any Greek army and rivaled the best Persian cavalry.


Philip also expanded the heavy infantry, recruiting men from regions of Macedon that had traditionally been outside the direct control of the king, such as the rugged areas of western Macedon. These reforms created a powerful and versatile army that would soon dominate the Greek world.


Beyond military reforms, Philip II also implemented strategic alliances. These alliances helped to consolidate his power and expand Macedonian influence throughout Greece. His political acumen allowed him to navigate the complex web of Greek city-states, often playing them against each other to his advantage.


Philip's reign was not without controversy. His life came to an end through assassination, a mysterious event that has intrigued historians for centuries. The circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear, with various suspects and motives proposed. Investigating this cold case involves analyzing ancient accounts, profiles of key figures, and available evidence to piece together the truth.


Despite his assassination, Philip II's legacy is undeniable. He transformed Macedon into a dominant power in ancient Greece through his military reforms, strategic alliances, and political advancements. His reign paved the way for his son, Alexander the Great, to launch his conquests and create one of the largest empires in ancient history.


Alexander, a legendary figure in his own right, inherited his father's powerful army and ambitious vision. Under Alexander's leadership, the Macedonian army conquered vast territories, spreading Greek culture and influence across the ancient world. The foundations for Alexander's success were laid by his father, Philip II, whose reforms and leadership transformed Macedon and set the stage for a new era in ancient history.

Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in 13th-century China. He was the first Mongol to rule over China when he conquered the Song Dynasty of southern China in 1279. Kublai (also spelled Kubla or Khubilai) relegated his Chinese subjects to the lowest class of society and even appointed foreigners, such as Venetian explorer Marco Polo, to important positions over Chinese officials. After failed expeditions against Japan and Java, his Mongol dynasty declined toward the end of his reign, and was completely overthrown by the Chinese after his death.


Kublai Khan’s Early Life:
The Mongols were a nomadic clan from the regions around present-day Mongolia. After uniting the individual nomadic tribes on the Mongolian plateau, Genghis Khan went on to conquer large portions of central Asia and China.
By the time Genghis’ grandson Kublai was born in 1215, the Mongol empire stretched from the Caspian Sea east to the Pacific Ocean. That same year, the Mongols had captured the northern China capital city of Yen-ching (modern-day Beijing), forcing the royal family to flee south.
Kublai was the fourth and youngest son of Genghis’ son Tolui and a woman named Sorkhotani Beki, who was a Nestorian Christian princess of the Kereyid Confederacy. Kublai and his brothers were largely raised by their mother, an intelligent and tolerant woman who dedicated herself to her sons’ careers.
Little is known about Kublai’s childhood, but he and brothers were taught the art of warfare at a young age. Kublai was reportedly adept in Mongolian traditions, having successfully brought down an antelope by the age of nine.
Kublai was also exposed to Chinese philosophy and culture early on thanks to his mother, who also ensured that he learned to read and write Mongol (though he wasn’t taught Chinese).


Early Rule:
When Kublai was 17 years old, his father died. At that time, Kublai’s uncle, Ogodei Khan (third son of Genghis Khan) was the Great Khan and ruler of the Mongol Empire.
In 1236, Ogodei granted Kublai a fiefdom of some 10,000 households in the Hopei (Hebei) province. Initially, Kublai did not rule the area directly and instead left his Mongol agents in charge, but they imposed such high taxes that many farmers abandoned their homes to settle in areas not under Mongol rule.
When Kublai found out what was occurring in his lands, he replaced his Mongol retainers and tax merchants with Chinese officials, who helped restore the economy. (By the late 1240s, those who had fled were returning and the region became stable.)
By the early 1240s, Kublai had amassed numerous advisors from a range of philosophies and ethnic groups, including Turkish officials, Nestorian Christian Shiban, Mongol military men and Central Asian Muslims.
He relied heavily on Chinese advisors, and in 1242 had learned about Chinese Buddhism from the monk Hai-yun, who would become a close friend of his. Other counselors taught him Confucianism, though Kublai’s rudimentary understanding of Chinese language and reading was a huge limitation for him.


Kublali Conquers Yunnan:
Ogodei Khan died in 1241. The title of Great Khan eventually passed on to his son Guyug in 1246, and then to Kublai’s eldest brother Mongke in 1251.
Great Khan Mongke declared Kublai the viceroy of Northern China. He sent their brother Hulegu west to pacify the Islamic states and lands and focused his attention on conquering Southern China.
In 1252, Mongke ordered Kublai to attack Yunnan and conquer the Dali Kingdom. Kublai spent more than a year preparing for his first military campaign, which lasted three years, and by the end of 1256 he had conquered Yunnan.


Xanadu:
The successful campaign had greatly expanded Kublai’s domain and it was time for him to initiate a large-scale project that would demonstrate his growing attachment to and concern for his Chinese subjects: the establishment of a new capital.
Kublai ordered his advisors to select a site based on the principles of feng shui, and they chose an area on the frontier between China’s agricultural lands and the Mongolian steppe.
His new northern capital would later be named Shang-tu (Upper Capital, in contrast to Chung-tu, or Central Capital, the contemporary name for Beijing). Europeans would later interpret the city’s name as Xanadu.


The Great Khan:
Kublai’s growing power did not go unnoticed by Mongke, who sent two of his trusted aides to Kublai’s new capital to investigate revenue collection. After a hasty audit, they uncovered what they claimed to be numerous breaches of the law and began to violently purge the administration of high-ranking Chinese officials.
Kublai’s Confucian and Buddhist advisors persuaded Kublai to appeal to his brother on a familial level in person. Monkge — facing both a religious conflict between Buddhist and Daoists and a need for allies in conquering the Song Dynasty in Southern China — made peace with Kublai.
Kublai held a debate in his new capital in 1258. He ultimately declared the Daoists the losers of the debate and punished their leaders by forcefully converting them and their temples to Buddhism and destroying texts.
Mongke launched his campaign against the Song Dynasty and instructed his youngest brother Arik Boke to protect the Mongol capital of Karakorum. In 1259, Mongke died in battle and Kublai learned of his brother’s demise while fighting the Song in the Sichuan province.
Arik Boke gathered troops and held an assembly (called a kuriltai) in Karakorum, where he was named the Great Khan.
Kublai and Hulegu, who had returned from the Middle East upon hearing of Mongke’s death, held their own kurilta – Kublai was named Great Khan, sparking a civil war, which would eventually end with Arik Boke’s surrender in 1264.


Kublai Khan as Yuan Dynasty Emperor:
As Great Khan, Kublai set his sight on unifying all of China. In 1271, he established his capital at modern-day Beijing and named his empire the Yuan Dynasty – one of several efforts to win over his Chinese subjects.
His efforts paid off, with much of the Song imperial family surrendering to Kublai in 1276, but the war continued for another three years. In 1279, Kublai became the first Mongol to rule all of China when he conquered the last of the Song loyalists.
Kublai held a relatively wise and benevolent reign, with his rule distinguished by grand infrastructure improvements (including an efficient Mongolian postal system and an extension of the Grand Canal), religious tolerance, scientific advancements (improvements to the Chinese calendar, accurate maps, and institutes of medicine, among other things), paper currency backed by gold reserves and trade expansions.
Despite adopting and improving on many Chinese systems and ideals, Kublai and his Mongols did not want to become Chinese – they kept many of their own customs and remained unassimilated to Chinese life.
In 1275, Marco Polo was presented at the court of Kublai Khan. The young Venetian so impressed the ruler that he appointed him to several diplomatic and administrative posts, which he held for about 16 years before his return to Venice.


Failed Military Campaigns:
Kublai instituted a class system that placed Mongols on top, followed by Central Asians, Northern Chinese, and finally Southern Chinese. The latter two classes were more heavily taxed, especially to fund Kublai’s failed – and expensive – military campaigns.
These campaigns included attacks on Burma, Vietnam and Sakhalin, which successfully resulted in these regions becoming tributary states of the empire with tributes that were, unfortunately, dwarfed by the costs of the individual campaigns.
Kublai also launched two failed sea-borne invasions of Japan, in 1274 and 1281.
In the second, a vast armada of some 140,000 troops from China converged in ships off the island of Kyushu, but a powerful typhoon – which some Japanese believed to be a kamikaze or “divine wind” – struck the invading troops. Many of their vessels sank, and about half of the troops perished or were captured.
This was followed by a failed subjugation of Java (now Indonesia) in 1293. In less than a year, Kublai’s troops were forced to withdraw, overcome by tropical heat, terrain and diseases.


Kublai Khan’s Death and Legacy:
Kublai began to withdraw from the day-to-day administration of his empire after his favorite wife Chabi died in 1281 and his oldest son died in 1285.
He drank and ate in excess, causing him to become obese; additionally, the gout that plagued him for many years worsened. He died on February 18, 1294, at the age of 79 and was buried in the khans’ secret burial site in Mongolia.
Uprisings against Mongol rule would begin in earnest some 30 years later, and by 1368 the Yuan Dynasty was overthrown.

Ancient Egypt was ruled by powerful kings known as pharaohs, who were considered both political rulers and divine figures. Over thousands of years, Egypt saw many influential pharaohs who shaped its history, culture, and legacy. Among them, Tutankhamun is one of the most famous due to the discovery of his nearly intact tomb. However, many other pharaohs had a far greater impact on Egyptian civilization.


Tutankhamun, often called "King Tut," ruled from approximately 1332 to 1323 BCE during the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. He ascended the throne as a child, around nine years old, after the tumultuous reign of his predecessor, Akhenaten, who attempted to shift Egypt’s religious focus to the worship of a single god, Aten.

### King Tut Facts:
Restored the traditional polytheistic worship of Amun and other gods.

Moved the capital back to Thebes from Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna).

Died at around 18 years old, possibly due to genetic diseases, infection, or injury.


His tomb, discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, contained vast treasures, providing valuable insights into Egyptian burial practices and art.

Despite his fame today, Tutankhamun's reign was short and relatively unremarkable compared to other pharaohs. His significance largely comes from the discovery of his well-preserved tomb rather than his accomplishments.

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs. These massive structures were constructed over several decades using a combination of ingenuity, manpower, and careful planning.


1. Planning and Design:
The construction of a pyramid began with careful planning and design. Architects and engineers would determine the size, shape, and orientation of the pyramid.
The dimensions of the pyramid were based on mathematical and astronomical principles. The sides of the pyramid were aligned with the cardinal points (north, south, east, west) using astronomical observations.


2. Quarrying and Transporting Stones:
The stones used to build the pyramids were quarried locally. Limestone was the primary building material for the core of the pyramid, while granite was used for the burial chambers and other inner parts.
The stones were transported from the quarries to the construction site using sledges and wooden rollers. Workers would moisten the sand in front of the sledge to reduce friction, making it easier to move the heavy stones.


3. Building the Pyramid:
The construction of the pyramid started with the laying of a foundation made of large stones. The core of the pyramid was built using blocks of limestone, while the outer casing was made of finer limestone.
Workers used simple tools such as hammers, chisels, and wooden levers to shape and move the stones. The precision with which the stones were cut and placed is a testament to the skill of the ancient Egyptian builders.


4. Ramp System:
To lift the heavy stones to higher levels of the pyramid, the Egyptians used a ramp system. This ramp was built using mud bricks and rubble, and it was gradually extended as the pyramid grew taller.
The ramp allowed workers to drag the stones up to the desired height using sledges and ropes. The stones were then positioned in place using levers and manpower.


5. Finishing Touches:
Once the core of the pyramid was completed, the outer casing was added to give the pyramid its smooth, polished appearance. The outer casing was made of Tura limestone, which was finely cut and polished to a high sheen.

Egyptian hieroglyphics are a form of ancient writing used by the ancient Egyptians. Hieroglyphics were primarily used for religious and monumental inscriptions, but they were also used for administrative and literary purposes. The writing system is composed of logograms and phonetic symbols.


1. Development and Use:
Hieroglyphics developed around 3200 BCE and were used until the 4th century CE. They were primarily carved or painted on walls, monuments, and papyrus scrolls.
The writing system was used for religious texts, royal decrees, historical inscriptions, and personal correspondence.


2. Hieroglyphic Symbols:
Hieroglyphics consist of three types of symbols: logograms, phonograms, and determinatives.
Logograms represent words or concepts and are depicted as pictures of objects or symbols.
Phonograms represent sounds and are used to spell out words phonetically.
Determinatives are symbols placed at the end of a word to clarify its meaning or provide context.


3. Decipherment:
The decipherment of hieroglyphics was a major breakthrough in the understanding of ancient Egyptian culture. The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, played a crucial role in deciphering hieroglyphics.
The Rosetta Stone contains a decree issued by King Ptolemy V in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic. By comparing the Greek text, which was already known, with the hieroglyphic text, scholars were able to decipher the hieroglyphs.


4. Writing and Reading Hieroglyphics:
Hieroglyphics can be written from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom, depending on the direction in which the symbols are facing.
Reading hieroglyphics involves identifying the individual symbols and understanding their meanings. Some symbols represent sounds, while others represent whole words or concepts.

Herodotus was a Greek writer and geographer credited with being the first historian. Sometime around the year 425 B.C., Herodotus published his magnum opus: a long account of the Greco-Persian Wars that he called “The Histories.” (The Greek word “historie” means “inquiry.”) Before Herodotus, no writer had ever made such a systematic, thorough study of the past or tried to explain the cause-and-effect of its events. After Herodotus, historical analysis became an indispensable part of intellectual and political life. Scholars have been following in Herodotus’ footsteps for 2,500 years.


Early Life:
Herodotus was born in about 485 B.C. in the Greek city of Halicarnassus, a lively commercial center on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. He came from a wealthy and cosmopolitan Greek-Carian merchant family. (The Carians, of Minoan descent, had arrived in that part of Asia Minor before the Greeks had.)
In the middle of the 6th century B.C., Halicarnassus became a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire and was ruled by the tyrant Lygdamis. Herodotus’ family opposed Lygdamis’ rule and was sent into exile on the island of Samos.
When he was a young man, Herodotus returned briefly to Halicarnassus to take part in an abortive anti-Persian rebellion. After that, however, the writer never returned to his home city again.
Did you know? In 443 B.C., Herodotus joined a group of Athenians who set out to colonize a city, Thurii, in southern Italy. He died there in around 425 B.C.


Origins of ‘The Histories’:
Instead of settling in one place, Herodotus spent his life traveling from one Persian territory to another. He crossed the Mediterranean to Egypt and traveled through Palestine to Syria and Babylon. He headed to Macedonia and visited all the islands of the Greek Archipelago: Rhodes, Cyprus, Delos, Paros, Thasos, Samothrace, Crete, Samos, Cythera and Aegina.
Herodotus sailed through the Hellespont to the Black Sea and kept going until he hit the Danube River. While he traveled, Herodotus collected what he called “autopsies,” or “personal inquiries”: He listened to ancient myths and legends, recorded oral histories and made notes of the places and things that he saw.
When Herodotus was not traveling, he returned to Athens; there, he became something of a celebrity. He gave readings in public places and collected fees from officials for his appearances.
In 445 B.C., the people of Athens voted to give him a prize of 10 talents—almost $200,000 in today’s money—to honor him for his contributions to the city’s intellectual life.


‘The Histories’:
Herodotus spent his entire life working on just one project: an account of the origins and execution of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–479 B.C.) that he called “The Histories.” (It’s from Herodotus’ work that we get the modern meaning of the word “history.”)
In part, “The Histories” was a straightforward account of the wars. “Here is the account,” the work begins, “of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus in order that the deeds of men not be erased by time, and that the great and miraculous works–both of the Greeks and the barbarians—not go unrecorded.”
It was also an attempt to explain the conflict—“to show what caused them to fight one another,” Herodotus said—by explaining the Persians’ imperial worldview. Most of what we know about the Battle of Marathon is from Herodotus. “The Histories” also incorporated observations and stories, both factual and fictional, from Herodotus’ travels.
Earlier writers had produced what Herodotus called “logographies”: These were what we might call travelogues, disconnected tales about places and people that did not cohere into a narrative whole. By contrast, Herodotus used all of his “autopsies” to build a complete story that explained the why and the how of the Persian Wars.


Greco-Persian Wars:
After Herodotus died, editors divided his Histories into nine books. (Each was named after one of the Muses.) The first five books look into the past to try to explain the rise and fall of the Persian Empire. They describe the geography of each state the Persians conquered and discuss their people and customs.
The next four books tell the story of the Greco-Persian Wars itself, from the invasions of ancient Greece by Persian emperors Darius and Xerxes to the Greek triumphs at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale in 480 and 479 B.C.
Herodotus’ encyclopedic method did not leave much room for analysis. He treats every piece of his narrative, from the main themes to the digressions and from the facts to the fictions, with equal importance.
He shows how Persian hubris led to the downfall of a great empire, but he also places a great deal of stock in gossipy tales of personal shortcomings and moral lessons.
Herodotus also warned readers that he couldn’t verify everything he incorporated into “The Histories” because much of what he wrote was gathered from stories he heard while traveling.


Legacy of The Histories:
Rival historian Thucydides, who relied only on “factual” evidence to provide a less subjective account of “what had been done,” frequently criticized Herodotus for inserting “fables” into his narrative just to make it more “delightful” and pleasant to read.
Indeed, there are people who call Thucydides “the first historian” and Herodotus “the first liar.” But no matter how one judges his reporting, Herodotus will likely get credit for taking a dry political story and turning it into literature.

In the annals of ancient history, few rivalries have captured the imagination quite like that of Hannibal and Carthage. Born in 247 BCE, Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian military commander who would go on to become one of the greatest military strategists of all time. His exploits during the Second Punic War against Rome have left an indelible mark on the pages of history.


Carthage, a powerful city-state located in modern-day Tunisia, was a formidable maritime empire in the ancient world. Situated on the coast of North Africa, it boasted a strong navy and a prosperous economy built on trade. Carthaginian society was known for its skilled merchants and seafarers, who established colonies throughout the Mediterranean.


Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barca, a prominent Carthaginian general, grew up amidst the backdrop of Carthage's ongoing conflict with Rome. The First Punic War had ended in 241 BCE, with Rome emerging as the dominant power in the Mediterranean. Carthage, however, was determined to regain its lost glory and sought revenge against its Roman adversaries.


At the age of nine, Hannibal swore an oath of eternal hatred against Rome. He was trained in the art of warfare by his father, who instilled in him a deep sense of loyalty to Carthage. Hannibal's military education encompassed a wide range of disciplines, including strategy, tactics, and leadership. He studied the works of renowned military theorists such as Sun Tzu and Alexander the Great, honing his skills for the battles that lay ahead.


In 218 BCE, Hannibal embarked on his audacious campaign against Rome. Crossing the Alps with a formidable army, he caught the Romans off guard and won a series of stunning victories. His most famous triumph came at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, where his tactical brilliance led to the annihilation of a Roman army twice the size of his own. Hannibal's victories sent shockwaves throughout the Roman Republic, and his name became synonymous with military genius.


Despite his remarkable successes, Hannibal was unable to deliver a decisive blow to Rome. The Roman Republic, with its vast resources and resilient spirit, proved to be a formidable adversary. Over time, Rome gradually turned the tide of the war, forcing Hannibal to retreat back to Carthage.


In 202 BCE, the decisive Battle of Zama took place, marking the end of the Second Punic War. Hannibal's forces were defeated by the Roman general Scipio Africanus, and Carthage was forced to accept a humiliating peace treaty. The city-state was stripped of its territories, its navy, and its wealth, effectively ending its status as a major power.


Hannibal, unwilling to surrender to Rome, sought refuge in various kingdoms and cities. Eventually, he fell into Roman hands, but rather than face capture and humiliation, he chose to take his own life in 183 BCE.


The story of Hannibal and Carthage is one of triumph and tragedy, of a brilliant military mind pitted against an empire that would stop at nothing to ensure its dominance. Hannibal's legacy endures to this day, as his strategies and tactics continue to be studied by military leaders around the world. Carthage, once a proud and powerful city, may have fallen, but its memory lives on in the annals of history.

In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people” (from demos, “the people,” and kratos, or “power”). It was the first known democracy in the world. 
This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes and the dikasteria, the popular courts in which citizens argued cases before a group of lottery-selected jurors. Although this Athenian democracy would survive for only two centuries, its invention by Cleisthenes, “The Father of Democracy,” was one of ancient Greece’s most enduring contributions to the modern world. The Greek system of direct democracy would pave the way for representative democracies across the globe.
Who Could Vote in Ancient Greece?
 

“In a democracy,” the Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “there is, first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law.” It was true that Cleisthenes’ demokratia abolished the political distinctions between the Athenian aristocrats who had long monopolized the political decision-making process and the middle- and working-class people who made up the army and the navy (and whose incipient discontent was the reason Cleisthenes introduced his reforms in the first place). 
Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from Athens for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia.
However, the “equality” Herodotus described was limited to a small segment of the Athenian population in Ancient Greece. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or “resident foreigners,” and 150,000 slaves. Out of all those people, only male citizens who were older than 18 were a part of the demos, meaning only about 40,000 people could participate in the democratic process.


The Ekklesia:
Athenian democracy was a direct democracy made up of three important institutions. The first was the ekklesia, or Assembly, the sovereign governing body of Athens. Any member of the demos—any one of those 40,000 adult male citizens—was welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia, which were held 40 times per year in a hillside auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. (Only about 5,000 men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families.) 
At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, wrote and revised laws and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials. (Ostracism, in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years, was among the powers of the ekklesia.) The group made decisions by simple majority vote.


The Boule:
The second important institution was the boule, or Council of Five Hundred. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year. Unlike the ekklesia, the boule met every day and did most of the hands-on work of governance. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships (triremes) and army horses. It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. Its main function was to decide what matters would come before the ekklesia. In this way, the 500 members of the boule dictated how the entire democracy would work.
Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. This was because, in theory, a random lottery was more democratic than an election: pure chance, after all, could not be influenced by things like money or popularity. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance or enrich themselves. However, historians argue that selection to the boule was not always just a matter of chance. They note that wealthy and influential people—and their relatives—served on the Council much more frequently than would be likely in a truly random lottery.


The Dikasteria:
The third important institution was the popular courts, or dikasteria. Every day, more than 500 jurors were chosen by lot from a pool of male citizens older than 30. Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria “contributed most to the strength of democracy” because the jury had almost unlimited power. 
There were no police in Athens, so it was the demos themselves who brought court cases, argued for the prosecution and the defense and delivered verdicts and sentences by majority rule. (There were also no rules about what kinds of cases could be prosecuted or what could and could not be said at trial, and so Athenian citizens frequently used the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.)
Jurors were paid a wage for their work, so that the job could be accessible to everyone and not just the wealthy (but, since the wage was less than what the average worker earned in a day, the typical juror was an elderly retiree). Since Athenians did not pay taxes, the money for these payments came from customs duties, contributions from allies and taxes levied on the metoikoi. The one exception to this rule was the leitourgia, or liturgy, which was a kind of tax that wealthy people volunteered to pay to sponsor major civic undertakings such as the maintenance of a navy ship (this liturgy was called the trierarchia) or the production of a play or choral performance at the city’s annual festival.


The End of Athenian Democracy:
Around 460 B.C., under the rule of the general Pericles (generals were among the only public officials who were elected, not appointed) Athenian democracy began to evolve into something that we would call an aristocracy: the rule of what Herodotus called “the one man, the best.” Though democratic ideals and processes did not survive in ancient Greece, they have been influencing politicians and governments ever since.
Modern representative democracies, in contrast to direct democracies, have citizens who vote for representatives who create and enact laws on their behalf. Canada, The United States and South Africa are all examples of modern-day representative democracies.


How Democracy Developed in Ancient Greece:
Athens developed a system in which every free Athenian man had a vote in the Assembly.
In the late 6th century B.C., the Greek city-state of Athens began to lay the foundations for a new kind of political system. This demokratia, as it became known, was a direct democracy that gave political power to free male Athenian citizens rather than a ruling aristocratic class or dictator, which had largely been the norm in Athens for several hundred years before.
Athens’ demokratia, which lasted until 322 B.C., is one of the earliest known examples of democracy; and although recent scholarship has complicated the Eurocentric view that it was the first democracy, this ancient political system was extremely influential in the Mediterranean region. It inspired similar political systems in other Greek city-states and influenced the ancient Roman Republic.


Athenian Men Join the Assembly:
The last tyrannos, or tyrant, to rule Athens was Hippias, who fled the city when Sparta invaded in 510 B.C. Two or three years later, an Athenian aristocrat named Cleisthenes helped introduce democratic reforms. Over the next several decades, subsequent reforms expanded this political system while also narrowing the definition of who counted as an Athenian citizen.
What was Cleisthenes’ motivation for initiating these changes? Unfortunately, “we don’t have any good contemporary historical Athenian sources that tell us what’s going on,” says Paul Cartledge, a classics professor at the University of Cambridge. After the 514 B.C. assassination of Hippias’ brother, Cleisthenes may have sensed there was growing public support for a system in which the city-state was not governed by an elite ruling class.
“Cleisthenes, I think probably partly for his own personal self-promotion, put himself forward as champion of the majority view, which was that we must have some form of popular, ‘people’ regime,” Cartledge says.
To participate in the demokratia, a person had to be free, male and Athenian. In the beginning of the democratic period, Athenian men had to have an Athenian father and a free mother. By the mid-5th century B.C., Athens changed the law so that only men with Athenian fathers and mothers could claim citizenship. Because there were no birth certificates (or DNA tests) to prove parentage, a young Athenian man’s political life began when his father introduced him at their local demos, or political unit, by swearing that he was his father and bringing witnesses to attest to this, Cartledge says.


The Athenian democracy was direct, rather than representative, meaning that Athenian men themselves made up the Assembly. Because there were no population censuses, we don’t know exactly how many Athenian men there were in the 5th century B.C., but historians have commonly estimated the number to be around 30,000. Of those, around 5,000 might regularly attend Assembly meetings. In addition, Athenian men served on juries and were annually selected by lot to serve on the Council of 500.
There were other government positions that were in theory open to all Athenian men, although wealth and location played a large role in whether a man could take on a full-time government job or even make it to the Assembly to vote in the first place. Still, there were some positions that were only open to elites: the treasurers were always wealthy (ostensibly because wealthy men knew how to handle finances), and the 10 generals who occupied the top government office were always elite, well-known men.


Political Citizenship Remained Narrow:
And then, of course, there were all the other people in Athens who were completely cut off from political participation.
Assuming that there were about 30,000 Athenian men when the city-state developed its democracy, historians estimate there were probably about 90,000 other people living in Athens. A sizable portion of these people would have been non-Athenians who were enslaved (by law, Athenians couldn’t enslave other Athenians). Others were “resident aliens” who were free and lived in Athens but didn’t meet the requirements for Athenian citizenship. The rest were Athenian women and children, both of whom couldn’t join the Assembly.
Although these groups never gained the same political rights as Athenian men, there was some debate about whether they should be able to, says Josiah Ober, a classics professor at Stanford University.
“We know that the question of ‘could women be political beings?’ was debated,” he says. In 391 B.C., the Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote a comedy, Assemblywomen, in which women take over Athens’ government. “It’s meant to be funny in some ways, but there’s a serious thought behind it,” he says. Although Aristotle thought women weren’t psychologically fit for politics, Ober notes that Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, wrote in The Republic (circa 375 B.C.) that an ideal political system would include both women and men.


In addition, “there were moves several times in Athenian crisis history to…free large numbers of slaves to make them citizens, or at least make them resident aliens, on the argument that [Athens] needed more people who were full participants in the war effort,” Ober says. However, “these tended to get defeated.”
Athens’ democratic period also coincided with the city-state’s tightening of its control over what was originally a voluntary alliance of Greek city-states, but had now become an Athenian empire. The city-states had their own governments, some of which were influenced by Athens’ democratic system, but didn’t have any political power in Athens’ demokratia.
Athens’ democracy officially ended in 322 B.C., when Macedonia imposed an oligarchic government on Athens after defeating the city-state in battle. One of the Athenian democracy’s major legacies was its influence on the Roman Republic, which lasted until 27 B.C. The Roman Republic took the idea of direct democracy and amended it to create a representative democracy—a form of government that Europeans and European colonists became interested in several centuries later.


ongol leader Genghis Khan (1162-1227) rose from humble beginnings to establish the largest land empire in history. After uniting the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian plateau, he conquered huge chunks of central Asia and China. His descendants expanded the empire even further, advancing to such far-off places as Poland, Vietnam, Syria and Korea. At their peak, the Mongols controlled between 11 and 12 million contiguous square miles, an area about the size of Africa. Many people were slaughtered in the course of Genghis Khan’s invasions, but he also granted religious freedom to his subjects, abolished torture, encouraged trade and created the first international postal system. Genghis Khan died in 1227 during a military campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia. His final resting place remains unknown.


Genghis Khan: The Early Years:
Temujin, later Genghis Khan, was born around 1162 near the border between modern Mongolia and Siberia. Legend holds that he came into the world clutching a blood clot in his right hand. His mother had been kidnapped by his father and forced into marriage. At that time, dozens of nomadic tribes on the central Asian steppe were constantly fighting and stealing from each other, and life for Temujin was violent and unpredictable. Before he turned 10, his father was poisoned to death by an enemy clan. Temujin’s own clan then deserted him, his mother and his six siblings in order to avoid having to feed them.
Shortly thereafter, Temujin killed his older half-brother and took over as head of the poverty-stricken household. At one point, he was captured and enslaved by the clan that had abandoned him, but he was eventually able to escape. In 1178 Temujin married Borte, with whom he would have four sons and an unknown number of daughters. He launched a daring rescue of Borte after she too was kidnapped, and he soon began making alliances, building a reputation as a warrior and attracting a growing number of followers. Most of what we know about Genghis Khan’s childhood comes from “The Secret History of the Mongols,” the oldest known work of Mongolian history and literature, which was written soon after his death.
Did you know? Mongol leader Genghis Khan never allowed anyone to paint his portrait, sculpt his image or engrave his likeness on a coin. The first images of him appeared after his death.


Genghis Khan Unites the Mongols:
Going against custom, Temujin put competent allies rather than relatives in key positions and executed the leaders of enemy tribes while incorporating the remaining members into his clan. He ordered that all looting wait until after a complete victory had been won, and he organized his warriors into units of 10 without regard to kin. Though Temujin was an animist, his followers included Christians, Muslims and Buddhists. By 1205 he had vanquished all rivals, including his former best friend Jamuka. The following year, he called a meeting of representatives from every part of the territory and established a nation similar in size to modern Mongolia. He was also proclaimed Chinggis Khan, which roughly translates to “Universal Ruler,” a name that became known in the West as Genghis Khan.


Genghis Khan Establishes an Empire:
Having united the steppe tribes, Genghis Khan ruled over some 1 million people. In order to suppress the traditional causes of tribal warfare, he abolished inherited aristocratic titles. He also forbade the selling and kidnapping of women, banned the enslavement of any Mongol and made livestock theft punishable by death. Moreover, Genghis Khan ordered the adoption of a writing system, conducted a regular census, granted diplomatic immunity to foreign ambassadors and allowed freedom of religion well before that idea caught on elsewhere.
Genghis Khan’s first campaign outside of Mongolia took place against the Xi Xia kingdom of northwestern China. After a series of raids, the Mongols launched a major initiative in 1209 that brought them to the doorstep of Yinchuan, the Xi Xia capital. Unlike other armies, the Mongols traveled with no supply train other than a large reserve of horses. The army consisted almost entirely of cavalrymen, who were expert riders and deadly with a bow and arrows. At Yinchuan, the Mongols deployed a false withdrawal—one of their signature tactics—and then initiated a siege. Though their attempt to flood the city failed, the Xi Xia ruler submitted and presented tribute.
The Mongols next attacked the Jin Dynasty of northern China, whose ruler had made the mistake of demanding Genghis Khan’s submission. From 1211 to 1214, the outnumbered Mongols ravaged the countryside and sent refugees pouring into the cities. Food shortages became a problem, and the Jin army ended up killing tens of thousands of its own peasants. In 1214 the Mongols besieged the capital of Zhongdu (now Beijing), and the Jin ruler agreed to hand over large amounts of silk, silver, gold and horses. When the Jin ruler subsequently moved his court south to the city of Kaifeng, Genghis Khan took this as a breach of their agreement and, with the help of Jin deserters, sacked Zhongdu to the ground.
In 1219 Genghis Khan went to war against the Khwarezm Empire in present-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The sultan there had agreed to a trade treaty, but when the first caravan arrived its goods were stolen and its merchants were killed. The sultan then murdered some of Genghis Khan’s ambassadors. Despite once again being outnumbered, the Mongol horde swept through one Khwarezm city after another, including Bukhara, Samarkand and Urgench. Skilled workers such as carpenters and jewelers were usually saved, while aristocrats and resisting soldiers were killed. Unskilled workers, meanwhile, were often used as human shields during the next assault. No one knows with any certainty how many people died during Genghis Khan’s wars, in part because the Mongols propagated their vicious image as a way of spreading terror.


Genghis Khan’s Death and the Continuation of the Empire:
When Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia in 1225, he controlled a huge swath of territory from the Sea of Japan to the Caspian Sea. Nevertheless, he didn’t rest for long before turning his attention back to the Xi Xia kingdom, which had refused to contribute troops to the Khwarezm invasion. In early 1227 a horse threw Genghis Khan to the ground, causing internal injuries. He pressed on with the campaign, but his health never recovered. He died on August 18, 1227, just before the Xi Xia were crushed.
Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much land as any other person in history, bringing Eastern and Western civilizations into contact in the process. His descendants, including Ogodei and Khubilai, were also prolific conquerors, taking control of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the rest of China, among other places. The Mongols even invaded Japan and Java before their empire broke apart in the 14th century. Genghis Khan’s last ruling descendant was finally deposed in 1920.

Ramses III, the Last Great Egyptian Pharaoh:
Ramses III ruled Egypt for 31 years and is widely considered the last of the “great” pharaohs. His reign coincided with one of the most turbulent and challenging periods in ancient Mediterranean history, known as the invasion of the “Sea Peoples.”
The precise identity of the Sea Peoples is still unknown, but most scholars believe they were an ethnically diverse band of refugees from the western Mediterranean displaced by drought and famine, who came east looking for new lands to conquer and inhabit. Marauding fleets of Sea Peoples may have attacked Egypt at least twice during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramses III.
In 1177 B.C., Ramses III and the Egyptian navy successfully repelled the second massive Sea Peoples invasion, and the pharaoh memorialized the victory on the walls of his temple and tomb complex in Medinet Habu.
But the celebration was short-lived, says Eric Cline, an archaeologist and historian of the Bronze Age, who wrote 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Ramses III was able to fight off the Sea Peoples, but not an assassination plot by a jealous secondary queen in his harem. According to CT scans of Ramses III’s mummy, the pharaoh was stabbed through the neck and murdered in 1155 B.C.


Domino effect on Bronze Age Collapse:
In the 12th century B.C., the entire Mediterranean region went through a cataclysmic event known as the “Bronze Age Collapse.” For the kingdoms that fell to the Sea Peoples—or to other contemporaneous calamities like drought and famine—the collapse was swift and absolute. The Mycenaeans of Greece and the Hittites of Anatolia, for instance, saw their cities, cultures and even written languages essentially wiped out.
In part because Ramses III was able to repel the Sea Peoples, Egypt lasted longer, says Cline. But it eventually fell prey to the same problems afflicting the broader region: a “megadrought” lasting 150 years or more and the disintegration of a once-thriving Mediterranean trade network.


Disease, Lost Resources and Tomb Robbing:
After the death of Ramses III, Egypt was ruled by a string of ineffectual pharaohs also named Ramses. (Ramses XI, who died around 1070 B.C., was the last pharaoh of the New Kingdom.) Archaeological records from this period give clues to why and how Egypt entered such a rapid decline.
For example, the mummy of Ramses V appears to have smallpox scars on his face. While historians can’t be sure if he actually died from smallpox, records indicate that Ramses V and his family were buried in newly dug tombs, and also that there was a six-month moratorium on anyone visiting the Valley of the Kings after the burials.
Some scholars suggest this may have been one of the first disease-inspired isolation orders on record—and a possible sign that Egypt was plagued by a smallpox outbreak at that time.
In addition, during the reigns of Ramses V and Ramses VI, Egypt appears to have lost control of important copper and turquoise mines in the Sinai peninsula, since their names were the last of the Egyptian pharaohs inscribed on the sites. Egypt had probably withdrawn completely from Sinai and Canaan by 1140 B.C., says Cline.
Then, under Ramses IX, who ruled at the end of the 12th century B.C., Egypt was rocked by a string of tomb robberies. The economic conditions were so desperate—and the respect of the pharaoh’s authority so low—that thieves brazenly raided the tombs of fallen pharaohs for gold and treasure.


Foreigners on the Throne:
After the New Kingdom, Egypt was ruled by a succession of foreign powers, further evidence of its decline as an independent empire.
First came the Libyans, a nomadic people from the western frontier of Egypt, whose influence and culture gradually took over the seats of power. Shoshenq I, a pharaoh of Libyan descent, was the first pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty, who tried to restore the glory days of Ramses III by invading the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 10th century B.C.
Then, in the 8th century B.C., the Nubians or Kushites peacefully claimed the Egyptian throne during a time of political turmoil. A succession of Kushite pharaohs ruled Egypt for nearly a century as the 25th Dynasty before being pushed out by Assyrian invaders.
Egypt experienced its last gasp of greatness under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305 to 30 B.C.), a succession of Macedonian Greek pharaohs who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. Cleopatra VII is the best-known of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, who constructed a magnificent Hellenistic capital in Alexandria.
When Cleopatra and Marc Antony were defeated by the Roman Emperor Octavian (Augustus) in 30 B.C., Egypt became a province of the Roman Republic, bringing an end to the last of the ancient Egyptian dynasties. 

Darius I, often called Darius the Great, was a major figure in ancient history, reigning as the King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 522 BCE to his death in 486 BCE. He followed in the footsteps of Cyrus the Great, another Persian ruler known for his tolerance and mercy towards the people he governed. The Achaemenid Empire, also known as the First Persian Empire, was founded by Cyrus the Great and became one of the largest and most powerful empires of its time . At its peak, it stretched from Anatolia and Egypt, across western Asia, to the borders of northern India and Central Asia.


Before Cyrus the Great led his army across the Araxes River to fight the Armenians, he made his son Cambyses II king in case he didn't return from battle. However, after crossing the river, Cyrus had a vision of Darius with wings on his shoulders, standing on the borders of Europe and Asia. Cyrus saw this dream as a threat to the empire's stability, suggesting Darius might one day rule the world. This raised questions for Cyrus, as Cambyses was the rightful heir, leading him to wonder if Darius had treacherous plans.


Accounts of how Darius came to power vary between Darius himself and Greek historians. The oldest accounts describe a series of events where Cambyses II went mad, killed his brother Bardiya, and died from an infected leg wound. Following this, Darius and six nobles went to Sikayauvati to kill Gaumata, an imposter who had taken the throne by pretending to be Bardiya while the real king was away. Darius, who had been Cambyses' lance-bearer until the ruler's death, prayed for assistance in this endeavor.


In 522 BCE, Cyrus II of Persia, later known as Cyrus the Great, revolted against King Astyages of Media, eventually conquering the Medes and establishing the First Persian Empire, also known as the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus II used his tactical skills and understanding of the socio-political conditions to integrate the neighboring Lydian and Neo-Babylonian empires into the new Persian Empire. The Lydians of western Anatolia, under King Croesus, fell after a two-week siege when Persian forces advanced to their capital at Sardis. In 539 BCE, Persian forces defeated the Babylonian army at Opis, and Cyrus the Great presented himself in Babylon as a traditional Mesopotamian monarch, restoring temples and freeing political prisoners.


Darius I continued the policies of Cyrus the Great, showing tolerance and mercy towards his subjects. He allowed conquered peoples to rebuild their temples and revised the legal system. To better manage the vast empire, Darius I divided it into provinces, each governed by a satrap. These satraps were responsible for maintaining order and collecting taxes. Darius I also strengthened the empire by introducing a single currency and standard weights, which facilitated trade and economic stability. He also had an elite group called the "King's Ears" who would travel throughout the empire and report back any potential problems or rebellions.


The Persian Empire was a major power in the ancient Near East. The nomadic Persians arrived around 1000 BCE and settled in modern-day Iran. From the western Iranian plateau, they established settlements in the Zagros Mountains and Persis alongside the indigenous Elamites. By 550 BCE, Cyrus II, or Cyrus the Great, took control of the Median Empire. In 546 BCE, Cyrus led an attack that led to the fall of the Lydian Kingdom, followed by the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE. When Cyrus died in 530 BCE, his son Cambyses II succeeded him. Cambyses II successfully invaded Phoenicia and Cyprus and defeated the Egyptian army in the Battle of Pelusium.


The Persian Empire ultimately fell to Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. After Alexander's death, the empire was divided and mainly ruled by the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Seleucid Empire. Despite its eventual downfall, the Persian Empire left a lasting legacy, with its contributions to culture, religion, science, art, and technology. The empire's efficient administration, infrastructure, and tolerant policies allowed it to thrive for over 200 years, making it a significant period in ancient history.

How Cats Became Divine Symbols in Ancient Egypt:
Cats were more than just pets in ancient Egypt. They held a special place in the hearts and minds of the Egyptians, evolving from practical companions to powerful symbols of divinity and protection.
While it's difficult to say definitively what the Egyptians believed about their gods, Egyptologist Julia Troche explains that they didn't worship animals directly. Instead, they saw animals as representations of different aspects of their deities.


Practical Companions and Pest Control:
Cats were a valuable asset in ancient Egyptian households. They provided companionship and kept pests like snakes and scorpions at bay. This practical role is evident in tomb paintings, where cats are depicted lounging beneath chairs, chasing birds, and even wielding daggers against the serpent deity Apopis.


Companionship in the Afterlife:
The Egyptians believed in an afterlife and saw the tomb as a continuation of their earthly home. Cats, being integral to their lives, were also included in these eternal dwellings. Paintings in tombs often depict cats alongside their human companions, symbolizing their enduring bond.
The practice of mummifying cats and placing them in tombs further demonstrates their importance in the afterlife. This practice allowed the deceased to inhabit the mummified cat's body in the next world.


Royal Trendsetters and Feline Deities:
Ancient Egyptian royalty played a significant role in elevating the status of cats. Pharaohs kept large cats, adorned them with gold, and even allowed them to eat from their own plates. This royal patronage made cats fashionable among all classes, with even commoners incorporating feline motifs into their jewelry.
The goddess Bastet, daughter of Ra and Isis, is a prime example of how cats were associated with divinity. Initially depicted as a fierce lioness, she later became a symbol of domesticity, motherhood, and family protection.


Cats: Powerful and Fertile:
The Egyptians recognized the intelligence, speed, and power of cats. The lioness goddess Sekhmet, a warrior and protector deity, embodied these qualities. She safeguarded the sun god Ra and protected against illness and disease.
Cats were also linked to fertility, often depicted sitting beneath women's chairs, suggesting a connection to women and their reproductive abilities. This association likely stemmed from the fact that cats produce multiple kittens in a litter.


Cat Mummification and Divine Vessels:
The Egyptians believed that their gods could take on different forms, including those of animals. This led to the widespread practice of mummifying cats, as they were seen as vessels for divine spirits.
While cats weren't worshipped as gods themselves, they were considered sacred and were believed to be inhabited by deities. This belief fostered a thriving economy around cat breeding and mummification.
The ubiquitous presence of cats in Egyptian art, fashion, and home decor served as a constant reminder of the power and influence of the gods in their daily lives.

The Battle of Thermopylae is a legendary event, remembered as one of history's most significant last stands. It was one of many battles during the Greco-Persian Wars, a conflict between the Greeks and the Persian Empire. This particular battle saw a small force of Greek soldiers face off against the massive Persian army in a narrow pass.


The battle occurred in 480 BCE at Thermopylae, a narrow coastal passage in Greece. The Persian Empire, led by Xerxes I, sought to expand its territory westward, clashing with an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta's King Leonidas I. The geography of Thermopylae was key: its narrowness would help the Greeks negate the Persians' numerical advantage.


The conflict between the Greeks and Persians had been brewing for some time. In 490 BCE, the Persians, under King Darius I, invaded Greece but were defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. This defeat didn't end the Persian ambition; it fueled it. Darius's successor, Xerxes I, was determined to conquer Greece and assembled a massive army, one of the largest the ancient world had ever seen.


Estimates place Xerxes' forces at the beginning of the battle around 180,000 to 200,000 soldiers. To move such a huge army, Xerxes' engineers built a bridge across the Hellespont and established supply lines with marketplaces and trading posts along the route. His elite fighting force included 10,000 highly trained soldiers known as the Immortals.


Facing this immense army was a Greek force of only about 7,000, including just 300 Spartan warriors. The rest of the Greek army was made up of Arcadians and Lokrians. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Greeks, particularly the Spartans, were renowned for their discipline, superior weaponry, and fighting skills.


The Spartans, under King Leonidas, understood the strategic advantage of Thermopylae's narrow pass. For days, they held back the Persian advance, inflicting heavy casualties. The Spartan phalanx, a tight formation of soldiers with shields and spears, proved highly effective in the confined space, blunting the Persian's superior numbers.


Ultimately, a local resident betrayed the Greeks, revealing a hidden path that allowed the Persians to flank them. Knowing that their position was compromised, Leonidas dismissed most of his troops, remaining with his 300 Spartans and a few hundred other soldiers who chose to stay and fight. They fought to the last man, buying valuable time for the rest of the Greek forces to prepare for the Persian advance. The Spartans' sacrifice at Thermopylae became a symbol of courage and resistance against overwhelming odds, solidifying its place as one of the most famous battles in history.

The Battle of Salamis, a pivotal naval engagement in 480 BCE, stands as a testament to Greek resilience against the encroaching Persian Empire . This clash wasn't just a fight between ships; it was a defining moment that shaped the course of Western civilization, halting Persia's advance and preserving the burgeoning Greek culture . Understanding the events leading up to Salamis, the strategies employed, and the key figures involved provides valuable insight into this epic conflict .
The Battle of Salamis (September 480 BCE) remains one of the most consequential naval engagements in history. It was the turning point of the Second Persian Invasion, where a vastly outnumbered Greek fleet utilized geography and deception to shatter the naval supremacy of King Xerxes I.


1. The Strategic Prelude:
After the Greek defeat at Thermopylae and the subsequent burning of Athens, the Allied Greek navy retreated to the Saronic Gulf. While many Peloponnesian leaders wanted to retreat further to the Isthmus of Corinth, the Athenian general Themistocles argued that fighting in the narrow straits of Salamis was their only hope.
Themistocles famously forced the hand of both his allies and the Persians by sending a "traitorous" message to Xerxes via his slave, Sicinnus. The message claimed the Greeks were panicking and intended to flee under the cover of night. Xerxes, eager for a decisive victory, took the bait.


2. The Deployment:
The Persian fleet, numbering roughly 600–800 ships, moved into position overnight to block both exits of the Salamis straits, effectively trapping the Greeks.
The Persian Line: Composed of Phoenicians (right wing), Egyptians, and Ionian Greeks (left wing).
The Greek Line: Numbering roughly 370 triremes, the Athenians held the left wing (facing the Phoenicians), while the Spartans and Aeginetans held the right.


3. The Opening Maneuvers:
As dawn broke, the Persians advanced into the narrow channel. This was exactly what Themistocles wanted. In the open sea, the faster, more numerous Persian ships would have easily outflanked the Greeks. In the straits, the Persians' numbers became a liability.
The Greeks initially backed their oars, drawing the Persians deeper into the funnel-like passage. As the Persian front line pushed forward, the ships behind them became crowded and disorganized.


4. The Engagement: Chaos in the Straits:
The battle became a massive, disorganized melee. The primary weapon was the bronze-sheathed ram at the prow of the trireme.
Collisions: Because the water was so cramped, Persian ships began to collide with one another. When they tried to retreat, they crashed into their own reinforcements pushing forward from the rear.
The Boarding Actions: Greek triremes carried heavily armed hoplites. Once a ship was rammed or fouled, the Greeks would board and engage in hand-to-hand combat. The Persians, many of whom could not swim, faced certain death if their ships sank.
The Turning Point: The Athenian wing broke the Phoenician line on the Persian right. As the Phoenicians fled, they caused a chain reaction of panic across the Persian fleet.


5. The Persian Retreat and Aftermath:
Watching the disaster from a golden throne on the slopes of Mount Aegaleos, Xerxes saw his elite navy decimated. The Queen of Halicarnassus, Artemisia, famously escaped by ramming one of her own allied ships to trick the Greeks into thinking she was on their side.
By evening, the Persians had lost approximately 200 ships, while the Greeks lost only 40.


Consequences:
Persian Withdrawal: Fearing the Greeks would destroy the Hellespont bridges and trap him in Europe, Xerxes retreated to Asia with the bulk of his army.
Mardonius Remains: He left a smaller force under General Mardonius, which was eventually defeated the following year at the Battle of Plataea.
Rise of Athens: The victory solidified Athens as a premier naval power, leading directly to its "Golden Age" and the formation of the Delian League.


Did you know? The Greek victory was also a victory for democracy. Since the triremes required thousands of lower-class citizens (the thetes) to row, their contribution to the war effort significantly increased their political leverage in Athenian society.


The Battle of Salamis holds immense strategic significance. The Greeks, though outnumbered, possessed a crucial advantage: their knowledge of the narrow straits of Salamis. The Greek commander Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into this confined space, negating their numerical superiority and allowing the smaller, more maneuverable Greek ships to inflict heavy damage.
Key figures like Themistocles and Xerxes I played instrumental roles in the battle. Themistocles, the Athenian general, masterminded the Greek strategy, while Xerxes I, the Persian king, sought to crush the Greek resistance and expand his empire. The clash between these two leaders and their respective forces determined the fate of Greece and the future of the Western world.

The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. was part of the first Persian invasion of Greece. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War. 
With the Persians closing in on the Greek capital, Athenian general Miltiades took command of the hastily assembled army. Miltiades weakened the center of his outnumbered force to strengthen its wings, causing confusion among the invading Persians. 
His strategy was victorious over the Persians’ strength, and the victory of “the Marathon men” captured the collective imagination of the Greeks. The tale of the messenger Pheidippides running 25 miles to Athens to deliver the news of the Persian defeat inspired the creation of the modern marathon.


The Cause of the Battle of Marathon:
The Battle of Marathon was fought because the Persian Army wanted to defeat the Greek city-states that supported the uprisings in Ionia, part of modern-day Turkey, against the Persian Empire.
The first encounter on the Greek mainland between East (Persia) and West (Greece) took place in August or September of 490 B.C., on the small seaside plain of Marathon, 26 miles northeast of Athens. The Persian expeditionary force of Darius I was not large, perhaps numbering under 30,000. 
Led by generals Hippias, Datis and Artaphernes, the Persian Army arrived confident after storming the nearby Greek city-state of Eretria. No allies except the Plataeans joined the Athenian resistance of less than 10,000 troops, and some autocratic regimes in Attica supported the invaders in the hope of toppling the fledgling democracy.
What Happened at the Battle of Marathon?


To meet the larger invading force, the Athenian army commander Miltiades thinned out his army's center and reinforced the wings, hoping that his hoplites—heavily armed foot soldiers—could hold the middle while his flanks broke through the lighter-clad Persian infantry. In fact, the Athenian center broke, but it held long enough for the Athenians to rout the Persian wings and meet in the rear, causing a general panic among the invaders.
The Persians would invade Greece again in 480 B.C. under Xerxes I, son of Darius, who planned to succeed in conquering Greece where his father had failed. The allied Greek city-states under King Leonidas of Sparta held off the Persian invasion for seven days in the Battle of Thermopylae, earning them a place in history for their last stand in defense of their native soil. But it was the initial victory of the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon that is most remembered today.


Significance:
Almost immediately, the victory of “the Marathon men” captured the collective imagination of the Greeks. Ceremonial funeral mounds of the legendary 192 Athenian dead and the loyal Plataeans were erected on the battlefield. Epigrams were composed and panoramic murals were put on display.
Most of what we know about the Battle of Marathon comes from the account of the historian Herodotus, who wrote about it around 50 years after the battle took place in his Histories. Another famous author to immortalize the Battle was Robert Browning, who wrote the poem “Pheidippides” in 1879 to commemorate the soldier’s run from Marathon to Athens.


The First Marathon:
The first organized marathon was part of the first modern Olympics in 1896. The ancient games, held from approximately 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., did not include the race.
Michael Bréal, a friend of modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin, was inspired by the legend of the Battle of Marathon to create an endurance race. The first marathon was 40 kilometers, or under 25 miles (as opposed to today’s 26.2 miles), and almost half of the competitors had to quit from exhaustion. The winner of the first marathon was Spiridon Louis, a Greek shepherd who never ran another competitive race again.
The journey of Pheidippides from Marathon to Athens also inspired the first Boston Marathon on April 19, 1897. The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon and is also notable for allowing women to compete in 1972 when the first Olympic marathon for women wasn’t held until 1984.

